Reading Comprehension

If there were only one aspect of language that students could study (or that educators could teach), it would invariably be reading comprehension. Beloved reading comprehension, a friend to nearly every teacher of language. But what makes it so special? Why is it so revered by both students and teachers alike? To answer these questions, it helps to know just what reading comprehension is. Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text. This understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written and how they trigger knowledge outside the text. Humans are thought to have a set reserve, an established threshold for attention and absorbtion of information, commonly referred to as processing capacity. This being the case, it is generally believed that proficient reading depends on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read. Many educators in the United States believe that students need to learn to analyze text (comprehend it) even before they can read it on their own, and comprehension instruction generally begins in pre-Kindergarten or Kindergarten. But other US educators consider this reading approach to be completely backward for very young children, arguing that the children must learn how to decode the words in a story through phonics before they can analyze the story itself. The reason why reading comprehension is such an effective learning tool is that, like art, it teaches students to manipulate particulars in attempt to represent the universal. When a student reads a text, he or she is forced to absorb a great deal of particular facts concerning an infinitude of seemingly random subjects (volcanoes, molecules, skateboarding, etc.) and assimilate them into the bigger picture, establishing just how they fit in, or relate, to the broader world. Mathematics, the diametrical opposite of art, challenges students in an inverse way; it teaches them to manipulate universals in order to represent the particular. No matter what the number "3" may come to stand for - volcanoes or molecules or skateboards - the student will be able to manipulate these things given his or her understanding of math. Based on this understanding, one might actually say that reading comprehension shares a unique association with art and math, each providing a way of understanding the world from a fundamental, yet polar, perspective.