*H-870 Reading Comprehension
Paola Uccelli
As the ultimate goal of reading, reading comprehension has been defined both as a process of acquiring meaning from written language and as an outcome of accuracy or depth of text understanding. Beyond word reading ability, there are skills such as fluency, attention, and working memory and factors such as vocabulary, background knowledge, sociocultural knowledge, and motivation that influence one’s ability to extract and construct meaning from text. The interplay of these skills and factors that influence comprehension will be examined during the course and will focus specifically on the interaction between four key elements: the reader, the text, the activity, and the sociocultural context. This course is designed to help students (1) become familiar with the major issues and key research literature in the field of reading comprehension; (2) critique and integrate findings from that research literature; (3) conceptualize effective teaching of reading comprehension for both students and teachers of reading; and (4) critique and design research on reading comprehension. Assessment of reading will also be investigated in order to consider the impact of different factors on readers' performance. Permission of the instructor is required. This is a required course for master's students in the Language and Literacy Program for licensure.
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