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Chapter 5

Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction

Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamaraArizona State University

Comprehension is a complex task that is integral to success in academics and the workplace. Unfortunately, it is not a task that comes easily to all students. Hence, an important question faced by educators and researchers is how to most effectively provide students with instruction to improve comprehension, partic-ularly on how to understand and learn from challenging texts. One promising approach is to provide students with training to use comprehension strategies. Strategies are intended to help students overcome skill and knowledge deficits by using overt techniques that mimic or support the processes integral to suc-cessful comprehension, including understanding the words and sentences in the text, making connections between sentences, and making connections to what the student already knows (i.e., prior knowledge). In this chapter, we approach these research questions by building upon the 4-pronged comprehension strat-egy framework proposed by McNamara, Ozuru, Best, and O’Reilly (2007). This framework describes five types of strategies that can help to scaffold reading and comprehension. We expand upon this framework by describing various contex-tual factors that may influence comprehension and strategy use. Further, we dis-cuss methods to enhance strategy instruction, introducing five building blocks for effective comprehension strategy training.

Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction

Comprehension is a complex task that is integral to success in academics and the workplace. Unfortunately it is not a task that comes easily to all students. Hence, an important question faced by educators and researchers is how to most effectively provide students with instruction to improve comprehension, particularly on how to understand and learn from challenging texts. One promising approach is to provide students with training to use comprehension strategies. Strategies are intended to help students overcome skill and knowledge deficits by using overt techniques that mimic or support the processes integral to successful comprehension, including understanding the words and sentences in the text, making connections between sentences, and making connections to what the student already knows (i.e., prior

doi 10.1075/swll.16.05all© 2017 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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126 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

knowledge). This use of strategies is generally conscious, effortful, and purposeful. Thus, comprehension strategy training can help students to know how and when to employ specific strategies during reading. Important educational research questions regard what strategies to teach, to whom, and how to most effectively do so.

In this chapter, we approach these research questions by building upon the 4-pronged comprehension strategy framework proposed by McNamara, Ozuru, Best, and O’Reilly (2007). This framework describes five types of strategies that can help to scaffold reading and comprehension. We expand upon this framework by describing various contextual factors that may influence comprehension and strategy use. Further, we discuss methods to enhance strategy instruction, introducing five building blocks for effective comprehension strategy training.

Reading comprehension

The ability to comprehend academic texts is a crucial, yet challenging skill. National and international assessments repeatedly confirm the struggles faced by students, reporting that too many students fail to reach proficiency levels through to their high school years (Kindler, 2002; National Assessment Governing Board, 2013; NAEP, 2011; OECS, 2014). One reason for this underachievement is that reading compre-hension is a complex process that relies on the interplay between both lower-level and higher-level processes (Balota, Flores d’Arcais, & Rayner, 1990; McNamara & Magliano, 2009). Lower-level processes, such as word decoding and sentence parsing undergird a reader’s ability to understand the basic information conveyed by the words and the sentences in the text (e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994). Although these processes are necessary for comprehension, they are not the roadblocks to understanding text at a proficient level. Readers who are at the edge of being able to read at a proficient level are able to decipher and understand the basic information in text – the words and the individual sentences. By contrast, readers who exhibit proficient levels of comprehension are able to understand and establish connections among the multiple concepts in the text, as well as to related concepts that are not explicitly mentioned in the text.

To create these connections between text-based information and other infor-mation (e.g., prior world knowledge or past experiences), skilled readers generate inferences more frequently while they are reading (Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1994; Oakhill & Yuill, 1996). As a consequence, skilled readers more successfully construct coherent mental representations of the texts they are reading (e.g., McNamara & Magliano, 2009; see also Chapter 2 in the current volume). This representation contains in-formation explicitly provided in the text as well as related information connected by the inferences that are generated during comprehension. The coherence of this representation is driven primarily by the number of connections that are contained

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 127

in the representation (McNamara & McDaniel, 2004). As such, the successful, deep comprehension of texts is established through a number of cognitive processes, in-cluding the activation of prior knowledge (from within and beyond the given text), the incorporation of this knowledge into the mental representation, and the con-struction of connections among the propositions within the mental representation.

This is a complex and challenging task for many readersTo this end, an important research goal for both educators and comprehension researchers has been to identify the factors and processes that differentiate individ-uals who are more or less skilled at engaging in these comprehension processes (see Chapter 2 in the current volume). In other words, why do some individuals seem to process texts with relative ease, while others struggle to extract meaningful information from the texts they are reading? Past research in this area has identified a number of individual differences that differ between high and low skilled readers, such as prior knowledge (McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996; O’Reilly & McNamara, 2007), working memory (Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Daneman & Merikle, 1996), and motivation (Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000).

One factor that strongly relates to comprehension performance is the use of strategies (McNamara, 2007, 2011). Comprehension strategies serve as tools with which readers can overcome the many difficulties that may be encountered while processing challenging texts. As such, skilled readers often turn to comprehension strategies to navigate the comprehension process and, in turn, to generate a more coherent mental representation of the text they are reading. Importantly, these strategic text processing differences are malleable – previous research suggests that comprehension strategy training is generally effective and leads to increased text comprehension. This finding is, of course, most important for students who struggle to comprehend texts (e.g., Jackson & McNamara, 2013; McNamara, O’Reilly, Best, & Ozuru, 2006; Yuill & Oakhill, 1988).

The 4-pronged comprehension strategy framework

A wide range of strategies has been proposed in the comprehension literature. Indeed a review of all of the strategies that have been proposed, tested, and incor-porated within instructional settings is well beyond the scope of the current chapter. For that, we refer you to McNamara et al. (2007) who described comprehension strategies using the 4-pronged framework. As depicted in Figure 1, this framework serves as a means to organize and conceptualize the various types of comprehension strategies shown to effectively improve reading comprehension. The framework places monitoring comprehension and reading strategies at its center, and includes four strategy categories as its prongs. The first prong of reading strategies includes

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128 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

those related to preparing to read. These strategies aid in setting the goals for reading and in the use of prereading strategies to guide the reading process (e.g., preview-ing, creating concept maps, generating pre-reading questions). The second prong includes strategies to interpret the words, sentences, and ideas in the text. These strategies help the reader to more effectively focus on and understand the words in a text and develop a more coherent textbase understanding (e.g., paraphrasing, chunking, annotating text, taking notes, making bridging inferences, close read-ing). The third prong comprises strategies to help the reader go beyond the text by connecting the text with their prior knowledge and experiences with the world (e.g., question generation, self-explanation, visualization, imagery, use of external sources). Finally, the fourth prong of strategies is geared toward organizing, restruc-turing, and synthesizing the information that was presented in the text (e.g., using graphic organizers and reading guides, summarizing, writing essays).

This framework was founded on the basis of three underlying theoretical notions. The first of these is that reading strategy use is intrinsically metacognitive. Successful readers monitor their comprehension while reading and, as a result, are more likely to know when and why to employ specific strategies in different situations. Therefore, comprehension monitoring sits at the core of this framework, optimally prompting the most efficient use of comprehension strategies. In turn, the four prongs of compre-hension strategies both induce and support this comprehension monitoring process.

The second assumption of this framework is that the mental representations developed by readers are composed of multiple levels. In particular, the primary levels of a mental representation are the textbase and the situation model (Kintsch, 1998). The first level, the textbase, is comprised of the reader’s understanding of the words and sentences that are directly presented within the text. The situation mod-el, on the other hand, comprises information about a reader’s understanding that extends beyond the content of the text. Thus, this level integrates the information

Strategies to Prepareto Read

Strategies to Organize, Restructure, and

Synthesize the Text

MonitoringComprehension

and ReadingStrategies

Strategies to GoBeyond the Text

Strategies to Interpretthe Words, Sentences,and Ideas in the Text

Figure 1. The 4-Pronged Framework for Reading Comprehension Strategies (figure adapted from McNamara, Ozuru, Best, & O’Reilly, 2007)

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 129

contained in the text with knowledge that the reader already has related to the text content. These two levels of the mental representation correspond to the two sep-arate prongs: one to interpret the text (i.e., to construct a textbase understanding) and the other to go beyond the text (i.e., to construct a situation model).

The third theoretical notion that guides the 4-pronged framework is the idea that skilled readers construct coherent mental representations through an active processing of text information and an integration of that information with related concepts (Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994). Thus, in order to successfully com-prehend a text, a reader must be able to activate their prior world knowledge and develop links between this information and the content in the text. In addition, successful readers use comprehension strategies to most effectively integrate and synthesize this information from the text.

Contextual factors of strategy acquisition

A complete description of comprehension strategies must take into account con-textual factors that influence the processes inherent to comprehension. Therefore, in this chapter, we expand upon the 4-pronged framework by discussing four prin-cipal contextual factors that influence comprehension and, in turn, comprehension strategies: (1) the stimulus, (2) the task, (3) the method, and (4) the population.

One way to conceptualize the influence of contextual factors on strategic com-prehension processes is to consider the act of taking a photograph (see Figure 2). A first step in this process is to select an image that you would like to photograph. For the sake of this example, let’s say you decide to take a photograph of a flower. This image of the flower can be likened to the text that someone selects to read. Next, you might consider your options regarding how you are going to take the photograph. This is where metacognition comes in – you must fully consider the situation and, in particular, you must decide how you should process the image most effectively. Are you a professional photographer, a recreational photographer, or a novice?

Figure 2. Photography illustration example

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130 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

How much time do you have to take the photograph? What is your objective? What sort of equipment do you have? If you have multiple lens options (e.g., long-range, short-range, etc.), which of these will best capture the image that you seek?

If context were not important, taking this photograph would be relatively sim-ple. And indeed, for the novice, the task may appear simple: point and click. To capture the image, this process is often sufficient, just like capturing the words and sentences in a text. However, in order to meet specific objectives (such as captur-ing an artistic shot of the flower), pointing and clicking is often not sufficient: the surrounding context will have a large impact on the resulting image. For instance, if it is sunny outside, you will need to select a specific lens and use specific settings, so that you do not overexpose your image. On the other hand, if it is overcast or even raining, you will need to use entirely different settings to capture the image. Further, although you might successfully capture the intended image in each of these scenarios, the two images will differ from each other. They will have different characteristics, which may be subtle or largely obvious.

Strategic comprehension can be likened to professional photography, just as it corresponds to any learned skill. In the same way that context affects learning and memory processes (Engel, 1999; Hupbach, Hardt, Gomez, & Nadel, 2008; Roebers, Rothlisberger, Cimeli, Michel, & Neuenschwander, 2011), contextual factors in-fluence, guide, and limit comprehension and the use of comprehension strategies. Indeed, text comprehension is a complex process that entails interactions between the strategies being used and the contextual factors surrounding the activity. In the following sections, we describe four contextual factors that potentially influence comprehension and strategy use (see Figure 3). This is clearly not an exhaustive list. We have selected these examples because they have been shown to have strong impacts on comprehension, and most importantly because we propose that they are key to maximizing the effectiveness of strategy instruction.

StimulusWords, Sentences,

Sources

PopulationAge, Reading Skill, Prior Knowledge, Language

Contextual Factorsthat in�uence

comprehension strategy instruction

MethodHow is strategy

instruction delivered?

TaskInstructions, Goals,

Relevance

Figure 3. Four primary contextual factors to consider when developing and implementing comprehension strategy instruction

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 131

StimulusWithin the domain of text comprehension, the stimulus refers to the text or texts that an individual is reading. Not surprisingly, the characteristics of the texts them-selves can have a large impact on the ways in which readers process and ultimate-ly comprehend the information they read (McNamara & Magliano, 2009). These properties can range from the linguistic features of individual texts to the use of multiple sources to complete various tasks. Additionally, the sources of information found in these texts can range from multiple texts to the use of multimedia, such as graphs and pictures. Differences related to the characteristics of texts have direct effects on the processes in which students engage while reading, and ultimately, whether and how the various strategies they employ during comprehension effec-tively enhance their comprehension of the text(s).An example of one important stimulus effect relates to the linguistic properties of the texts that individuals read. Text-based properties provide critical information and cues that support compre-hension processes and can be identified within individual text sections or across multiple text sections (Gernsbacher & Givon, 1995; Magliano & Schleich, 2000). Thus, linguistic properties relate to the individual words in a text, the sentences that are constructed, and can even provide information about the discourse context as a whole. Differences in these features can impact the style of the text, as well as alter its readability and perceived quality. For instance, a word’s familiarity relates to how frequently that word occurs in the English language. This property has been linked to the speed at which words are processed, as well as how strongly words are tied to relevant world knowledge (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002; Haberlandt & Graesser, 1985; Perfetti, 2007). Consequently, texts that contain more familiar words are typically easier to read than texts with less familiar words.

A second text characteristic that is important to comprehension lies at the level of the sentence. Complex sentences are more difficult to parse – that is, it is more difficult to identify the separate ideas contained within these sentences and, subse-quently, to combine those ideas together in a meaningful way. One aspect of sen-tence complexity that is typically considered important for text comprehension is the length of the sentence. This measure is often used as a proxy for sentence complexity within common text readability formulas (see e.g., McNamara, Graesser, McCarthy, & Cai, 2014). Another important aspect of sentence complexity that affects reading comprehension is the number of words that precede the main verb in a sentence (Pearson, 1974–75), which carries the primary meaning of the sentence in the verb phrase. When there are many words prior to reaching the main verb, it is more dif-ficult to combine the various parts of the sentences into a meaningful whole.

A third important text characteristic is cohesion (McNamara et al., 2014). Cohesion is the glue that ties together the sentences. It comes in the form of con-necting words and phrases, such as because, therefore, however, and so on. It is

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132 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

also increased by greater overlap in the words and concepts between the sentences and paragraphs in a text. When sentences have more overlapping words, the read-er is better able to tie the sentences together – those words and concepts create connections within the mental representation that relieve the reader from having to generate links using prior knowledge. For this reason, cohesion is particularly important for readers who are processing texts that discuss less familiar topics (McNamara, 2001).

A fourth potentially important stimulus effect regards the use of multiple sourc-es of information during text comprehension and learning. Laboratory studies have often been constrained to the comprehension of individual texts, under relatively artificial conditions. By contrast, real texts and real tasks, more often than not, re-quire the comprehension of multiple texts and multimedia. Students are required to locate, understand, and use multiple sources of information when learning about specific topics. Similarly, workplace assignments often require individuals to seek information from multiple sources (internet, books, video). Text, particularly in classroom textbooks, is often accompanied by visual images such as figures, dia-grams, graphs, and illustrations. Mayer (1993), for example, estimated that over half of the pages within middle school science textbooks were devoted to visual images.

When the reader is faced with multiple sources of information, all of the sourc-es must be comprehended, and the information from these sources must be con-nected – which requires generating what is often called distal bridging inferences, or, when available, activating prior knowledge. However it is achieved, the reader must generate inferences in order to construct a coherent mental representation of the multiple sources of information.

TaskA second contextual effect regards the nature of, and the goals for, the reading task. This relates to the instructions that have been given to the reader as well as the reader’s own goals for reading the text. The established purposes and goals for engaging with the material can drastically alter the information that is processed and taken away from the text (Linderholm, Virtue, Tzeng, & van den Broek, 2004; McCrudden, Magliano, & Schraw, 2011). These purposes can be made explicit through instructions from a teacher, or they can simply be a product of the reader’s own desires and intentions. Variations in the goals established prior to reading a text, as well as in the specific actions required by the task instructions, can, there-fore, influence the processing of texts, as well as whether students effectively engage in the appropriate strategies for successful comprehension.

One example of an important task effect relates to the goals that readers set prior to engaging with a text. Just as there are a multitude of text types and text goals, there also exist many different purposes for which a reader may choose to

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 133

read a text. For example, a college student may choose to pick up a gossip magazine and read an article about celebrity relationships purely for entertainment purposes; a psychologist, on the other hand, might read the same text, but for the purpose of examining and understanding the social relationships described in that text. These two individuals have read the same text, yet they engage in vastly different processes. Importantly, explicitly prompting students to read for these specific pur-poses has a direct effect on the processes in which they engage. Van den Broek and colleagues (2001), for instance, demonstrated that asking students to read to study led to an increased number of bridging inferences and paraphrases, whereas asking students to read for entertainment led them to generate more editorial comments and elaborations.

A second example of a task effect that can impact comprehension strategies is the nature of the activities in which students are instructed to participate prior, during, or after reading. There are a multitude of text-related activities that teachers can assign to their students, such as writing a research report or asking and an-swering questions. Differences in these instructions can play a critical role in the way in which individual students process and comprehend text information, as well as how well they are able to recall the information they have read. Lorch, Lorch, and Morgan (1987), for example, investigated differences in readers’ processing of text information based on whether they were told that they would generate an outline or take a verification test after reading. The results of this study revealed that the students in the outline condition read topic sentences more slowly than students in the verification task condition. Additionally, these students generated higher-quality outlines than their peers. Although both of these post-reading ac-tivities can serve as effective measures of text comprehension, this study suggests that differences in the activities assigned to students can shift the specific processes in which they engage during reading. An important note on this topic is that these activities that students are assigned to complete prior to, during, and after reading are not the same as the cognitive processes in which they are engaged (McNamara, Jacovina, & Allen, 2015). Thus, the impact of these various activities will not always be consistent across different text types and different individuals.

MethodA third contextual factor to consider is the method through which comprehension strategy instruction is provided. In addition to variations in the text and the task instructions, the method through which this instruction is delivered can have a key impact on students’ uptake of the information. One important consideration is whether instruction takes place in a laboratory or classroom. Laboratory experi-ments may provide good starting points to assess the effectiveness of interventions, but of course the end goal is to assess generalization within classroom settings.

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134 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

An additional consideration is the method chosen for disseminating compre-hension strategy instruction. For example, consider the differences in instruction provided by a teacher in a classroom to instruction provided by a computer sys-tem. The teacher and the computer system in this scenario can rely on the same curriculum, teach the same content to students and even provide the same texts; however, students’ understanding of the material and opportunities for practice will be very different. The classroom environment has certain benefits related to the ease that students can communicate with their teacher, which cannot be matched by a computer system. If students do not understand something in the lecture, they can easily ask questions and the teacher can help them to revise this misunderstanding through different examples or analogies. Adaptive computer systems, on the other hand, also have inherent benefits that cannot be matched by a human teacher. Most notably, these benefits relate to computer systems’ ability to provide automatic feedback to students based on their performance, as well as adaptive instruction for areas in which they are struggling. Thus, even though both environments can lead to learning (e.g., Holman, 2000; Sitzmann, Kraiger, Stewart, & Wisher, 2006), students will internalize and process the information differently due to their varying experiences.

An additional factor regarding instructional methodologies is the use of moti-vational techniques for increasing students’ engagement. Strategy instruction is a time-consuming task that can have a negative impact on students’ motivation and engagement towards learning tasks (Allen, Crossley, Snow, & McNamara, 2014; Jackson & McNamara, 2013). To reduce some of these concerns, educational games have been successfully integrated into classrooms and computer systems to en-hance engagement and persistence during training (Barab, Gresalfi, & Arici, 2009; Corbett & Anderson, 2001; Shaffer, 2007). Results of past studies suggest that edu-cational games are linked to enhanced learning and motivation of students (Ricci, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 1996; Rowe, Shores, Mott, & Lester, 2011). Additionally, students who have engaged with games are more likely to reengage in beneficial learning processes if they become disinterested (Boekaerts, Pintrich, & Zeidner, 2000; D’Mello & Graesser, 2006). Hence, motivating features embedded within comprehension strategy instruction can have a large impact on students’ subse-quent learning of these strategies.

PopulationA final contextual factor that we consider here is the population – who is learning to use these comprehension strategies? Variations in population can range from the age at which individuals are receiving instruction to their proficiency in the language of the text. How old is the reader? What are the readers’ comprehension skills and prior knowledge of the world and the text domain? Is the reader a second

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 135

language learner who speaks and comprehends a different language fluently? Who the reader is, in conjunction with what the reader is attempting to read, dictates the types of comprehension strategies that will be appropriate, and in turn the types of strategy instruction that will be beneficial.

One example of population differences relates to the age of the individuals who are reading the texts. Readers in different age groups undoubtedly have different sets of knowledge and skills that they bring with them to the text. Strategy instruc-tion for students in the second-grade, for example, will be largely different than instruction for high school students. The younger students will likely have a smaller vocabulary, less prior knowledge, and less developed decoding and parsing process-es. As a result, they will need to engage in different comprehension processes, and different comprehension strategies than older students. Quite likely, comprehension strategy instruction might focus more on strategies to interpret the words, sentenc-es and ideas in the text for younger or less skilled readers, and more on strategies to go beyond the text, and integrating the text for older, or more skilled readers.

An additional example relates to adults who are learning to read. Adult lan-guage learners are different from typical middle school or high school students, as they vary in their purposes for learning to read. Many of these students will be second language learners; others may have dropped out of school at a young age to work, or missed educational opportunities for a variety of additional reasons. For all of these students, there will be specific strengths and weaknesses that pinpoint why they are choosing to learn to read and what strategies will most effectively make use of their prior knowledge of the language and the domain.

Another important population difference relates to differences in native lan-guages. There are increasingly large numbers of non-native English speakers in the United States today, many who require some level of assistance when commu-nicating in English. For these students, the comprehension process has additional complications because second language comprehension introduces demands as-sociated with lower-level language skills, such as poor vocabulary knowledge and English language skills (Berman & Biancarosa, 2005; Center on Education Policy, 2007; Short & Fitzsimmons, 2007). Further, second language reading is typically a more effortful and active process, as the lower-level reading processes (e.g., word decoding and sentence parsing) have not yet been automatized.

Second language readers must learn to compensate for deficiencies in both their language skills and their reading abilities. Accordingly, a number of studies have investigated differences in strategy use based on native language (Pritchard, 1990; Block, 1986), as well as second language proficiency (Anderson, 1991; Carrell, 1989; for a review, see Brantmeier, 2002). Results of these studies reveal that stu-dents of low and high second language proficiency levels utilize profoundly differ-ent strategies during the comprehension process. For instance, skilled readers are

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136 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

more likely to use their general knowledge and focus on the overall meaning of the text, whereas less skilled readers tend to focus on decoding individual words and phrases (Brantmeier, 2002). Further, Taylor, Stevens, and Asher (2006) conducted a meta-analysis of 23 studies on L2 reading strategy interventions. They found that several types of strategy instruction enhance L2 comprehension, including semantic mapping, activating prior knowledge, and comprehension monitoring. Notably, while strategy instruction does indeed benefit second language learners, the studies supporting this conclusion have involved students of different ages, cultures, and native (first) languages. Hence, appropriately matching the type of strategy instruction to the needs of the second language learner is a relatively open field of research.

MotivationalComponents

Deliberatepracticeopportunities

Formativefeedback

Explicitstrategy

instruction

Varyingtask conditions

Figure 4. Five building blocks for successful comprehension strategy instruction

The five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction

Given the contextual factors that influence comprehension strategies, it follows that instruction of these strategies will not be a simple, straightforward task. Indeed, there are multiple components that contribute to the effectiveness of strategy in-struction and ultimately enhance the effects of these strategies on comprehension. Here, we propose five factors that should be considered for comprehension strategy instruction to be most effective (see Figure 4). These five “building blocks” are to provide: (1) varying task conditions, (2) explicit strategy instruction, (3) deliberate practice opportunities, (4) formative feedback, and (5) motivational components. We discuss each of these building blocks in more detail below.

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 137

Varying task conditionsThe first building block we propose is the concept of introducing students to varying (different) task conditions. Specifically, we suggest that students should be exposed to reading comprehension tasks across a number of different environments during training, and taught when and why to use certain strategies based on these changes. These conditions may relate to the instructions that they are given (e.g., to read and ask questions, to think-aloud while reading, etc.), the goals of comprehension (e.g., to read for entertainment, to read to write a research paper, etc.), or the type of texts that they are asked to comprehend (e.g., multiple texts, texts with figures, etc.). As noted in the previous section on contextual factors, the processes that are employed while reading texts can vary based on a number of different factors, such as the type of text or method of instruction. Given that these processes are variable, it is important than students be exposed to comprehension tasks under a number of different conditions. According to Pressley and colleagues (1992), exposing readers to this diverse set of reading experiences provides them with “occasions for discov-ery of the situational appropriateness of particular strategies.”

Importantly, when exposing students to these different task conditions, teachers must also ensure that students are taught why they must shift their comprehension processes across the different task environments. In other words, students should be taught how to be metacognitive during reading (McNamara et al., 2007). Because certain strategies are more or less effective as a result of the task context (Alexander & Judy, 1988), learning to comprehend texts successfully relies on students being taught which strategies are effective in specific contexts and how to select the most appro-priate strategy in these different contexts (Everson & Tobias, 1998; Maqsud, 1997).

Explicit instruction of strategiesIf strategy effectiveness depends on context, students must also be given explicit instruction on the different strategies that are available to them. Although many readers engage in comprehension strategies for which they have never received explicit instruction, many or most students cannot be expected to pick up com-prehension strategies by implicit exposure or through varied experiences reading texts. Rather, students should be provided with explicit instruction on the most effective comprehension strategies, and given information about why they work in specific situations. Providing students with this explicit strategy instruction, particularly in the initial phases of instruction, provides the student with a schema for why the strategy is being learned, what the strategy can accomplish, and when it might be more or less useful. Of course, explicit instruction is relatively useless if the strategies are never applied to targeted reading material and if the activities surrounding them do not go beyond simple directives to use them (McNamara, 2007). Strategy instruction is most effective if it follows a clear progression, where

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138 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

the teacher first describes the strategy and its general purpose, demonstrates how to use the strategy in various situations, and finally provides students with practice applying the strategy to their own writing. Additionally, this instruction is most beneficial when teachers clearly relay the importance of the comprehension strat-egies and provide praise for their use (see McNamara, 2007, for more information about reading comprehension strategies that can be used in the classroom).

Deliberate practice opportunitiesOnce students have been taught the strategies that they can use to enhance com-prehension, they must be provided with opportunities for practice. When students engage in practice, they are able to better automatize their actions and be more stra-tegic during comprehension tasks. Importantly, this practice should be deliberate, in that it is focused on a specific goal, strongly motivated, and effortful (Healy et al., 2012). Deliberate practice encourages readers to focus on their own weaknesses, target areas for improvement, and monitor their progress using self-assessments (Ericsson, 1996). This form of deliberate practice is more effective than other forms of practice for promoting the acquisition of complex skills (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993), and without it, even the best learners will be unable to achieve their highest levels of performance.

Within the context of comprehension strategy instruction, students should be given opportunities to practice the specific strategies for prolonged periods of time. In this way, students will be able to more efficiently make use of these various strat-egies and they will be more readily available to students in future comprehension tasks (McNamara, Jacovina, Snow, & Allen, 2015).

FeedbackAn additionally important feature of effective strategy instruction is that students are provided with formative feedback on their reading. In direct contrast to sum-mative feedback (i.e., final grades, exam scores, etc.), formative feedback focuses on target and actionable feedback that relates to areas in which students need the most help. This form of feedback is particularly helpful in the earliest phases of strategy acquisition and helps students to understand the criteria by which they are being assessed, and identify the factors that contribute to the quality of their performance (Ericsson et al., 1993; Ericsson, 2008). Teachers can reinforce the strategies taught in the classroom by paying careful attention to the feedback that they provide to students. In particular, teachers should avoid simply stating that students answered a question right or wrong; rather, they should provide feedback that is specific, ac-tionable and relates back to the strategies that students have been taught (see Shute, 2008 for a list of guidelines for constructing formative feedback). Importantly, the type of feedback that instructors provide students is critical to its effectiveness, and

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 139

this can vary according to the specific context of the task (Schmidt & Bjork, 1992). The ultimate purpose of this feedback, however, is to promote metacognition and monitoring amongst students, so that they can ultimately be able to accurately monitor their own performance during comprehension (Duvivier et al., 2011).

Motivational componentsDespite its effectiveness, practice using comprehension strategies can often be re-petitive and boring, leading students to disengage over extended practice sessions. One way that teachers can combat disengagement is with educational games (Barab et al., 2009; Corbett & Anderson, 2001; Shaffer, 2007). Educational games lever-age students’ intrinsic enjoyment of gaming to increase their motivation and per-sistence to complete learning tasks. Importantly, students’ motivation can increase even with the simplest of educational games. Thus, even if teachers do not have access to sophisticated, professional games, they can improve student motivation by adding game elements, such as a narrative or points, to basic reading assignments. As long as the game features are not overly distracting from the educational content, they can increase students’ interest and, consequently, their learning outcomes. These game elements can be particularly important for second language learners, because reading in a second language can be extremely complex and frustrating; thus, having game elements might provide the motivation that students need to persist in training sessions.

Importantly, games are only one example of a method through which students can be motivated to practice these comprehension strategies. Other approaches in-clude combining strategy instruction and motivational interventions, such as those based on the reading engagement model (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). Motivation can take many forms, such as the desire to perform well on standardized tests or learn information about the world; therefore, instruction intended to increase mo-tivation must remain sensitive to the context of the learning task. Evidence broadly supports the notion that motivation is an important consideration. Teachers should be sensitive to these motivational issues and provide students with specific reasons that comprehension strategy instruction and practice is fruitful and important.

Conclusion

Comprehension is a complex and difficult activity. To successfully make sense of complex texts, readers must employ strategies that can help them to overcome comprehension difficulties. A number of different types of strategies have been developed and categorized according to their purposes and effectiveness in different situations (McNamara et al., 2007). To understand when to employ these different

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140 Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

strategies and how they will affect comprehension, readers must consider a number of contextual factors. These contextual factors ultimately have a strong influence on how comprehension strategy instruction should take place.

In this chapter, we described four contextual factors (i.e., stimulus, task, meth-od, population) that can influence strategy acquisition. These are standard factors that are traditionally taken into account when conducting experiments and con-sidering the generalization of research findings. Here, we propose that these factors should also be considered in the context of comprehension strategy research and instruction. There is ample evidence suggesting that these factors influence how different strategies will affect text processing and ultimately comprehension. Of course, it would be impossible to consider all of these factors simultaneously, par-ticularly in the context of classroom instruction. To help instructors navigate these contextual factors, we have proposed five building blocks for effective comprehen-sion strategy training (i.e., varying task conditions, explicit strategy instruction, deliberate practice opportunities, formative feedback, motivational components). These building blocks represent key components of successful strategy instruction, which help to render factors related to the stimulus, task, and method more explicit, and by consequence aid in considerations for a target population.

Important questions certainly remain in the literature. For example, there is too little research that systematically varies contextual factors, and even less that looks at dependencies related to the effectiveness of the building blocks that we have highlighted here. We also must remain agnostic as to the effectiveness of these approaches in relation to the types of strategies outlined in the 4-Pronged Framework (see Figure 1 and McNamara et al., 2007). There is not enough research to date to support conclusions regarding the relative importance of the building blocks with respect to different types of strategies. For example, is explicit strategy instruction more important when learning strategies to think beyond the text (e.g., elaboration) or when learning strategies to synthesize text (e.g., summarization)? Is formative feedback more important when learning strategies to prepare to read or when learning strategies to interpret the text? Such questions are important to address in future research.

Ultimately, our aim in this chapter is to encourage both educators and research-ers to consider the role of context in the development of comprehension strategy interventions. By placing a stronger emphasis on the specific contexts for compre-hension strategy instruction, educators can insure that their students receive the instruction that will be most effective for them, based on their own strengths and weakness, in addition to their individual goals for reading.

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Chapter 5. Five building blocks for comprehension strategy instruction 141

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