Research on Reading Comprehension Difficulties After Year Four: Actioning Appropriately

About 10%-20% of students in Australian schools experience ongoing literacy problems. Many students exhibit average intelligence and ongoing reading and comprehension difficulties after year four. Their reading problems are not linked to factors such as sensory acuity deficits or socioeconomic disadvantage. Recent research suggests that many of these problems may be related to language difficulties. Other researchers have sought to explain persistent reading failure by studying localised and whole brain functions. There are also a number of other factors outside the learner that contribute to the persistence of reading comprehension problems in the middle school years. However, the research findings are varied. Consequently it has been difficult to construct consistent and appropriate instructional strategies for students who experience reading comprehension failure over long periods of time. The existing research literature has recognised good teaching approaches but it has been found that many of these are not widely practiced in classrooms. This study seeks to locate within the current body of research subgroups of failing readers and to suggest strategies that can be applied to teaching practice. Introduction Approximately 30% of all students in years 3 and 5 do not meet the identified performance standards in reading and writing in Australian schools (National School English Literacy Survey, 1997). Other research findings consistently show that there are about 10% 20% of students with ongoing literacy problems (Louden, Chan, Elkins, Greaves, House, Milton, Nichols, Rivalland, Rohl, & Van Kraayennoord, 2000). In the United States evidence from longitudinal, population-based data indicates that a similar proportion of the population have a significant reading disability (Reid Lyon, 2003; Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004). Even though reading pedagogy in recent times has generally broadened to include a sociocultural perspective students with reading difficulties have tended to be lumped together in intervention programs that focus on word level skills without taking into consideration the individual language and background needs of students (Luke, 1998; Reid & Green, 2004). Although it has been found that a broad range good teaching methods can improve the reading performance of students with reading delays they are not, as yet, widely practiced in classrooms (NRP, 2000; Pressley, 2002; Snow, 2002). Added to this is the concern that there has been relatively little research involving the systematic evaluation of existing literacy intervention programs (De Lemos, 2004). This study seeks to locate within the current body of research subgroups of failing readers and to suggest some strategies that can be applied to intervention practices. Late-emerging reading difficulties Many children experience difficulties in acquiring basic reading sub skills such as word identification and phonological decoding despite the fact that many of them exhibit average intelligence and have had adequate opportunities to learn (Vaughn, Levey, Coleman, & Bos, 2002; Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004). Many educators have asserted that phonological awareness of the sound structure of words and the ability to manipulate sounds in words are key components in the development of reading ability (Tumner, Chapman, Greaney, & Prochnow, 2002). However, despite the widespread systematic approaches to teaching phonemic awareness and decoding, a significant number of students enter the upper-primary and middle school grades with notable deficits in their reading ability (Manset-Williamson & Nelson, 2005). Many of these students also have deficient comprehension, poor automatic word identification, poor decoding and fluency difficulties (Vellutino et al., 2004). There are concerns that by the time they reach the upper-primary grades resistance to remediation will have set in and they will be beyond the age when reading skills can easily be taught (Manset-Williamson & Nelson, 2005; Vaughn, Levey, Coleman, & Bos, 2002). Leach, Scarborough & Rescorla (2003) observed that the first indication that a student may have reading difficulties is from poor performance on comprehension tests in fourth grade. They claimed that one reason