Seminar by Professor Jane Oakhill (University of Sussex) 'Children’s difficulties with text comprehension: From research to practice'

A substantial minority of children have problems with text comprehension, even though their word recognition is within the normal range. Research has shown that skilled and less-skilled comprehenders differ in a number of ways, and in the first part of this presentation I will discuss the relative contribution of several theoretically relevant skills and abilities to the prediction of reading comprehension (as opposed to single word reading) during the early years of schooling (age 7 to 11). In the second part of the talk, I will consider some open questions and possible future directions for this research, with a particular focus on the relations between vocabulary skills and inference making. I will also consider the implications of the findings so far for helping children to develop and improve their comprehension skills.