Notes

Comprehension in research refers to the complex cognitive process of extracting meaning from a text through active and intentional thinking. It involves the interaction between the reader and the text. The process of comprehension is influenced by various factors such as reader-based factors (e.g., phonemic awareness, vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, engagement and interest, etc.) and text-based factors (e.g., genre considerations, quality of text, density and difficulty of concepts, etc.). Research on reading comprehension suggests that readers who comprehend well are also good decoders, and that time spent reading is highly correlated with comprehension. The National Reading Panel recommends several strategies to improve reading comprehension, including question answering, comprehension monitoring, cooperative learning, graphic/semantic organizers/story maps, question generation, and summarization.