S3-01. Deconstructing the Rope: An Introduction with Dr. Jane Oakhill

Dive into our first episode as Dr. Jane Oakhill, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex, gives a high-level overview of Scarborough’s Reading Rope. She also emphasizes the importance of inferencing in comprehension, why the Simple View of Reading is still relevant almost 40 years later, and how each element of the rope comes together to deconstruct the complexity of reading.

Quotes:

“We’re often quite surprised at what children don’t understand and we make a lot of assumptions about things we find utterly trivial.”

“It’s not just having knowledge that’s important, but also being able to activate that knowledge when appropriate.”

Resources:

Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension by Jane Oakhill

Want to discuss the episode? Join our Facebook group Science of Reading: The Community.

Transcript

Susan Lambert: How do we help students become confident readers and what do all our students need so they can enjoy reading success, especially during this unprecedented time. Welcome to Season 3 of Science of Reading: The Podcast. I'm your host, Susan Lambert. This season we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of Scarborough's Reading Rope, a model that helps us understand the complexities of learning to read and helps us focus on evidence-based practices.

Each episode will cover elements of the model, what it means, and how it should impact classroom instruction. We've lined up a dream team of Science of Reading experts we think you'll really love. The Science of Reading movement continues to grow. And at a time that is more important than ever, it's vital we focus on research-based practices to deliver classroom instruction that allows students to learn. If they aren't learning, we need to examine our practices. We may not know what changes are  coming next, but we do know we need to stay connected. And learning from each other will get us through it. The more we learn and listen, the more we'll be prepared to lead. Our students are counting on us.

Today we kick off a new series celebrating the 20th anniversary of Scarborough's Reading Rope. We talk with Jane Oakhill, longtime reading researcher and professor of experimental psychology at the University of Sussex. Jane walks us through an overview of the Reading Rope and introduces us to her area of expertise. We hope you enjoy this episode as we launch an exciting new series.

Well, hello Jane. I'm really honored to have you on today's podcast. 

Jane Oakhill: Well, thank you very much, Susan, and, and I'm very happy to be here and, uh, talk about the Simple View and the rope model and how some of my research relates to  those ideas.

Susan Lambert: Um, we are really, really pleased about that. And, uh, we always like to start by asking our guests to tell our listeners just a little bit about your journey and how you ended up in this world of early literacy. 

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm. Well, like many aspects of, of my life, um, a lot of it was pure serendipity, in fact. Because I started off as a, as a teacher, as, um, a U.K. primary school teacher, so that's, um, sort of five-to-11 year olds. Um, but while I was doing my education degree, I really developed, um, an interest in, in research. Um, and so when I went into teaching, I was, I had that research career in the background still. And after a couple of years I did in fact get some funding to do a Ph.D. Um, initially that was going to be in, in education. Um, and I wasn't sure what I, what I should do. But one thing that that stuck in my mind from my teaching was, um, that there was a tradition at the time to get children to read to the teacher, uh, one-on-one, um, just to make sure that their reading was progressing okay.

But I wasn't happy just hearing them read out loud. I wanted to, um, ask them about what they were reading and how they were finding, what had happened in the book so far. Uh, not just because, um, you know, I wanted to check their understanding, but because it was a bit more interesting, uh, for me to talk to them about the book as well.

And I remember one child who really, really struck me because he was a very good word, reader. He was, uh, fluent, um, seemed to have a know, be above average in word reading ability, but he could not explain what he was reading about, what had happened previously in the book. I just drew a complete blank when I, when I asked him questions about what he was reading, which seemed to me utterly bizarre you know, how did this child get to be such a good reader and, and okay at, you know, every day interactions, um, but seemed to have so little ability to, to understand when he was reading. So after some initial indecision about what to do for my Ph.D. topic, uh, I decided to investigate this issue. Why is it that some children can read apparently fluently, but understand very little of what they've just read?

Uh, so, I actually moved into, um, experimental psychology at, at Sussex because I found that the, um, I was reading more and more about the psychological work on reading. And, uh, completed my, my Ph.D. there with the supervision of, um, Phil Johnson-Laird. And I thought when I started my Ph.D. that um, by the end of it I'd had this, this issue pretty much sorted.

I'd have all the answers. Uh, but of course, almost 40 years later I'm still asking questions. And it seems like, I think with, with many areas of research, you know, the more you find out, the more there is to find out. Um, so I'm still asking questions about reading comprehension and I'm, I've been particularly interested to recently in, in looking at how my and, and others research can be, um, best applied to support reading comprehension.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. 

Jane Oakhill: Yeah. 

Susan Lambert: That's a, that's an amazing journey. It's, you, you would, you, maybe you wouldn't be surprised, but so many people that I've talked to and I ask them that question, it was a single child or a single experience that comes to mind for them that really launched them into a different kind of career than they thought that they would be pursuing.

Jane Oakhill: Okay. Yeah.

Susan Lambert: And, um, in, in terms of your helping to translate that work that you're  doing, I have to mention, um, your book, Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension, which we'll link our listeners to in the show notes, but I, I know I shared with you already, it really broadened my view on comprehension.

Um, so thank you for writing that. What was your inspiration to, to bring that to print? 

Jane Oakhill: Um, I think it was the, the main motivation and I've wanted to do, um, a book like that for a number of years before I finally got round to it with my colleagues, um, the main inspiration was trying to make psychological research, um, accessible to, um, teachers and teacher educators.

Um, I don't know if there's the same sort of divide in, in the U.S., and it is changing in the U.K., but, um, it seems that, um, I mean this is obviously a, a generalization, but in, but it seems that educationalists and teachers, uh, tend to favor uh, research that's done in education departments over research that's done in psychology departments, which they regard as a little bit perhaps rarefied, not terribly relevant to what's going on in the classroom.

And so a major motivation for, for the book was to try to make that research from, from psychology more accessible and relevant to people who could use it very broadly. Yeah. Um. 

Susan Lambert: Well, you've, you did it very well and, um, and it's a really great book to use as a book study, so...

Jane Oakhill: Okay.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. Like I said, we appreciate that.

Jane Oakhill: Thank you. So, um, I could say a little bit more about the, the aims of the book a bit more detail.

Susan Lambert: Yeah, please.

Jane Oakhill: So what we were trying to address really is, is what is comprehension. And I think that, um, as, as skill comprehenders, um, we kind of know what it feels like to understand a text and we, we know whether the end product of our comprehension is good or not.

But, that's not necessarily going to help us teach comprehension, because I think in order to teach comprehension, we need to understand the different ways in which we might achieve that product, i.e., the processes involved in reading comprehension. And that's what we focused on in, in the book. So there's, um, broadly a chapter that, that summarizes the, the work on different processes and strategies that, that, um, we all need, not just children, we all need for comprehension. Um, and what we were trying to do is to make those much more accessible, um, to teachers, teacher educators, so that they could not only diagnose what might be going wrong with comprehension, um, but better understand how to teach it by making those processes really explicit for children. And also to help children who are having problems by seeing which processes are, um, not so, so good in those children and what they, they need some additional help with.

Susan Lambert: Yeah.

Jane Oakhill: So, um, that, that was the aims in a bit more detail. 

Susan Lambert: Yeah. So really bringing that, uh, motivation you had to the hands of other people and, and the work that you've done over the years.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: Well, um, for our listeners who have been listening to this podcast for a while, they know that we have been doing a lot of work talking about the Simple View of Reading...

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: Um, and Scarboroughs Rope, but specifically when we talk about the Simple View of Reading, I would love if you could describe it and talk about why this model is important, um, and then we'll sort of move into Scarborough's from there. 

Jane Oakhill: Okay. All right. So, um, the point Gough and Tunmer's, uh, Simple View, I think their, their first paper was published in 1986, and their idea was that variation in reading, by which they mean reading comprehension, understanding text, can be captured simply in two main components, uh, which they termed, uh, decoding, um, and linguistic comprehension, which others have um, labeled, language understanding. Now the, it's important to, um, understand that the name Simple View is not meant to imply that reading or learning to read is a simple process. What they were trying to capture is that this is a simple way to concept, conceptualize the complexity of reading. And one thing that, um, was new about, uh, their conceptualization was that they argued that these two components, the decoding and linguistic comprehension, depend on really quite different skills and processes. So another thing that Simple View emphasizes, um, and the rope model, um, is that the importance of teaching these strands regarding these strands as both important, um, and teaching those, um, from the outset of teaching reading.

Um, the idea is that reading, reading comprehension, um, is the product not the sum of those two components. So that if one of them is zero, then overall reading ability is going to be zero. There's anything multiplied by zero is zero, of course. 

Susan Lambert: Mm-hmm. 

Jane Oakhill: Um. Now things are not usually that extreme, right? So it's, it's, um, not typical to find, um, well, it's typical to find children who, um,  have, yeah, I mean, at, at the outset, a child would have zero word decoding skill, but some language reading ability. But once children start learning to, to read, they tend to have some ability in each of the, um, strands, but that might be quite unbalanced. Um, there's one nice example of how these strands can be completely differentiated there.

And that comes from a story about, um, John Milton and his strategy for reading text in Greek after he became blind. And what he did was he got his daughters, um, to learn to decode the ancient Greek alphabet. Though they didn't understand a word of spoken Greek, they, um, they dutifully learned, uh, to decode Greek so they could read the Greek texts aloud and Milton could understand them even though he couldn't read the words.

So it's as though they were, um, each, uh, different strands in, in the Simple View. So Milton's daughters provided the decoding skills and Milton provided the language comprehension skills, and together they got, he got to reading comprehension. Yeah. 

Susan Lambert: That's fascinating. What a great story. 

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: Um. And so the Simple View of Reading has been around since mid-'80s.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm. 

Susan Lambert: What would you say to people that say, "Well, that was a long time ago, it cannot be relevant now." 

Jane Oakhill: Well, I would say, "Why, why not?" You know, what has changed so dramatically that we don't, um, don't still need to under, I think we need to understand more about these, um, these different strands, which is where the rope model comes. But I think that all the evidence, um, on the contrary points to the fact that the Simple View is, is still very relevant, that we're still thinking in terms of, of these two main areas of, of reading the word level reading and, and the text level language comprehension. Um. So, I would say to people who, who say that it's, it's no longer relevant, "Well, if you look at all the research that's going on and has been going on since it was, uh, born, then uh, I think you'll see that it is still relevant." 

Susan Lambert: Yeah, that felt a little like a trick question, I'm sure. We are trying to help our, our listeners understand this idea of the Science of Reading, right?

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: That the preponderance of evidence continues to support and expand and broaden and deepen. Um, that Simple View of Reading. Um. 

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm. So, so I think that, just to add to that, I think that the science since the mid-'80s, um, has helped us elaborate on those threads, but I don't think it's, it's changed them  fundamentally.

Susan Lambert: That's a great word. Uh, the elaboration word.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: So when we, when we move into talking about Scarborough's Rope, which is another representation then, based on the Simple View of Reading, how are the two of those things related? 

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, um, apparently Scarborough's Rope model was, um, conceived entirely independently of, of the Simple View. Um.

Susan Lambert: Very interesting.

Jane Oakhill: She, yeah, I didn't realize that until very recently. Um, she, it, it had been in her mind, uh, for many years prior to the initial publication of it in, in 2001, and, um, she initially conceptualized it as, um, a graphic for a talk handout as a sort of visual metaphor. And she wanted it to simply conceptualize in a, in a simple and straightforward way, the findings that, that fed into the two different strands of reading. So you could almost regard it like, um, a sort of framework for a literature review. What's important to, to reading in, in these two different, um, from these two different aspects? Um, so unlike the Simple View, which is really is a testable theory, the rope model is more of a framework, uh, for understanding reading.

And, um, so, so her, so the, and another difference is that Scarborough's Rope model provides much more detail of the processes and skills that, that contribute to the two strands. The two, the basis of the two strands is, is pretty much the same, the word reading and the language comprehension strands. Um, but the rope model emphasizes the the more of the details of the processes that contribute to effective reading. So again, it's emphasizing that reading is in fact quite complicated. And it also represents the, um, idea that these strands are mutually interdependent, so the, um, language comprehension strands and the word reading strands are um, intertwined within those two strands to start with. And then gradually through developments, and that's an aspect of, um, Scarborough's Rope model that isn't in the Simple View, it's a developmental model. So across time everything becomes more and more integrated, more, um, automatic, um, so that reading in time kind of flows together into this integrated whole, um, that just happens when, when we read for comprehension. 

Susan Lambert: That's, that's very helpful. And, and for our listeners, this is the first episode where we're really going to dive into the elements then of Scarborough's Rope, um, each element itself and, and talk about what it is and what the implications for instruction are.

Jane, I would love if you could provide a high level overview of, of the elements of the rope and, and how it's organized. 

Jane Oakhill: Okay. I'll have a go. Um, I was, uh, only planning to talk about the, the language components of, of the rope. I imagine. Yeah?

Susan Lambert: That's that's great. Yeah.

Jane Oakhill: Because that's what I know much more about. Okay. Um. So. Yeah. What I thought I'd do is say a little bit about the, the different elements and, and mention some of my own research that, that relates to most of those. We haven't, um, done research on all these, uh, different elements. Um, and I should say that, that the research wasn't directly inspired by Scarborough's Rope model because I was, um, doing and, and publishing research on reading comprehension problems about 20 years before she published the rope model. But I have found it a very helpful way to think about these different contributory processes, um, and how they fit together. Um, and, and a, a way of, of representing those, those processes graphically. So, um, okay. So I'll say a little bit about these, uh, language comprehension elements.

Susan Lambert: Great.

Jane Oakhill: So first of all, background knowledge. Um, well, obviously it's, uh, going to be easier to understand a text if you have some relevant background knowledge that you can situate the, the text within. And that might be especially important when you're reading a factual text where perhaps knowledge of technical terms is, is crucial for understanding.

But of course it is not a one way street. And as, as children and indeed as adults, we gain a lot of our knowledge, um, from reading. So there must be some sort of reciprocity between background knowledge, um, and um, and reading for comprehension. And of course, deriving knowledge from text to i.e., learning from text, is going to be dependent on, on other processes that I'll mention. And one, um, sort background theme of what I'm going to be saying in the next few minutes is that many of these different strands are actually interdependent, um, and interconnected. Even, even at the, the very, very beginning. There's mutual dependencies and I'll expand on those a little bit in a minute.

So it's also important to note that having background knowledge is not enough to guarantee comprehension. That knowledge, you've got to have it, but it also needs to be rapidly accessed and applied to the comprehension task. So for instance, we did a study in which we taught children a novel knowledge base, and then asked them questions about a text that depended on that knowledge base.

So, although all the children learn the knowledge base to criterion, which was perfect, they, they all, um, had the knowledge, the, the poorer comprehenders didn't do as well on questions that we asked them about the text. So it seems it's not just having the knowledge that's important, but being able to rapidly access and activate that knowledge when it's, when it's appropriate, um, for text comprehension.

So I think that that's, um, you know, background knowledge. Yes, obviously it was helpful for text comprehension, but, but the picture's actually quite a lot more, more complicated, um, than that. Uh, the sec, Scarborough's second, um, thread she labels vocabulary. And again, in some respects, this is rather obvious, okay? It's not enough to decode words. Um, as the example of of Milton's daughters illustrates, you also have to know the meanings of words. But, more recently, researchers have made an interesting differentiation between breadth of vocabulary, which is what Scarborough explicitly mentions, um, under that heading.

Susan Lambert: Mm-hmm. 

Jane Oakhill: Which might be roughly how many words you know. So this is typically, typically measured by tests such as the Peabody picture vocabulary test. 

Susan Lambert: Mm-hmm. 

Jane Oakhill: And so the differentiation is between that breadth of vocabulary and depth of vocabulary, which is, roughly speaking, what you know about those words.

So for instance, that might be alternative meanings of the words, associates of the words. And we found that this depth of vocabulary is particularly important. It's specifically related to, um, entrance skills, which I'll come to in a minute, uh, and comprehension more generally, even once breadth of vocabulary is, is taken into account.

So that's some certainly an area in which, um, I've done some work. And again, it's not just this, uh, simple idea that more vocabulary, more knowledge is a good thing. There's these more, uh, we need a more nuanced view of that and, and also need to look at the, um, reciprocal relations between text comprehension and, and these processes.

Susan Lambert: Um, can I stop you for just a minute?

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: It already sounds like we're making interconnections between background knowledge and vocabulary. It seems you must have one to have the other, or there's somehow connected to each other. But, um, this idea of breadth and depth, then, I would imagine that when you start to get depth of vocabulary, you're much more flexible in terms of your application of that to further background knowledge. Does that make sense at all? 

Jane Oakhill: Yes. Yes. I think that's, that's, that's right. Because you develop, um, I don't want to get too technical, but you're developing, when you're developing, um depth of vocabulary, you're developing um, what we could term, semantic fields. So these rich associations of, of links, um, between not just words but concepts. And that's also going to be important for, uh, development and, and storage of, of new knowledge. So if you have these, these links between concepts and understand how things are related, that's really going to support, um, your maintenance of knowledge and, and new learning because you can fit in new information into those, um, semantic frameworks if you like.

Susan Lambert: Yeah, very interesting. Thank you for letting me interrupt you. 

Jane Oakhill: It's okay. Please do. Um. Okay. Scarborough's third area, um, language structures. We haven't really, I, I keep saying we don't. I, um, and I should mention my, um, my longstanding, um, colleague, collaborate collaborator, ex-Ph.D. student and friend, um. Kate Cain, who's now a professor in psychology at, uh, Lancaster University in the U.K.

So much of this work has, um, been done in collaboration with Kate, so I just wanted to acknowledge her contribution at this point.

Susan Lambert: Yes. Thank you.

Jane Oakhill: Um. So yeah, we haven't done much on syntax and sentence level understanding. Um. Mainly because I did some initial studies and found that this wasn't something that really differentiated good from poor comprehenders.

So I'm not saying that it's not something that's going to be associated with comprehension, you know, correlated with comprehension skill more generally. But, um, at the sentence level, the poor comprehenders didn't seem to have too many problems, though of course, there will be these relations more, more generally.

Um, and of course, again, this, this is, language, um, understanding at the sentence level, of course that's going to be important for understanding a text. Um, and semantics, meaning at the word and higher levels is also going to be, be crucial. And that relates to what I was saying about, about depth of vocabulary.

Um. So, yeah. Um, that's, those aspects are going to be important. Uh, and the, the knowledge of word meanings and links between word meanings can provide this, this sort of framework for understanding more, more broadly. Um, okay. Scarborough's fourth area is verbal reasoning, in which she includes, um, inference-making.

And we've done a lot of work on that aspect as, as have other people. And it's a very consistent finding that inference skills are related to, to reading comprehension in children and, and in adults. So. 

Susan Lambert: And what does, can you, can you explain a little bit about inferencing. What does that mean? I think we use it quite often.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: And maybe we don't completely understand what we're talking about when we say inferencing. 

Jane Oakhill: Okay. Okay. I'll say a little bit more about, um, types of inference and then give you an example, um, that, that will kind of make that a bit more explicit.

Susan Lambert: Great.

Jane Oakhill: Okay. So, we've investigated two main sorts of inference. Um, one sort is so-called text connecting, bridging local coherence inferences. They have a variety of, uh, names and those are typically used to connect up sentences. And as skilled adult readers, we might not really think of these as inferences, but, um, children do have issues with them. So these sorts of inferences are typically signaled in the text.

For instance, you might come across a pronoun that refers back to, um, someone or something. So very simple example. Um, uh, Sheila lent Mary her coat because she was cold. Okay? Um, so that to a skilled adult reader seems absolutely trivial. Who was cold? Who does the she refer to? Um, well, children get this wrong quite a lot of the time, and in that sentence they, um, will often pick the first named reference of the, the main person at the beginning of the sentence.

Um. But it's Mary who's cold. Sheila lent Mary her co coat because she was cold. Okay? So you have to make an inference, um, albeit a fairly simple one, for us to understand who was cold and who might be needing the coat and therefore who she refers to.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. Interesting.

Jane Oakhill: And then we contrast those with what I often called global coherence or gap filling inferences, which as the name suggests, connect up the text more generally and typically require some integration with background knowledge. Um, so there's a text that I very often use in, in talks where, uh, it's about two children who are um, playing together and there's mention of, um, paddling, uh, swimming costumes, waves, um, appear. Okay? And the inference and, and the, one of the questions is, uh, where are the children playing? And the inference is, they're playing on a beach or by the seaside. Okay? So you don't get that by just connecting up a couple of sentences. You have to use the cues in the text overall to work out what's going on.

And importantly. It, it's not the case that maybe, uh, just one or two clues will give you the answer. Because if they were swimming, had swimming costume, they could be in a swimming pool. Right? Um, I've forgotten what the other, if they were paddling, they could be in a paddling pool. Um. So you need to integrate the information across the text to come to the conclusion about where this text is set.

So that would be one example of what we term a global coherence inference. And it does require some background knowledge, but this is fairly in, in this case, fairly basic, readily accessible background knowledge. Um, and we check that the children do have that sort of knowledge. So we would ask them, you know, where might you find, expect to find waves, for instance.

Um, but we've also shown that, uh, again, this is an example where knowledge is not necessarily the problem because lots of children still fail to make these inferences even when we know that they've got the requisite knowledge to, um, make them. So, um, it seems that they're just not activating and applying that knowledge, uh, to use in their, in their text comprehension.

Um, one last thing to say about inference skills is that we've got evidence that inferences is inference ability is causally implicated in the development of reading comprehension. So it would be a good candidate for training. And this raises, um, an I important broader point that we don't want to waste time and resources training things where we don't have that sort of evidence, because lots of things, um, fall out of reading and just reading a lot.

I don't know if you're familiar with, with Keith Stanovich's chapter, uh, called, it's titled, uh, Reading Makes You Smarter. 

Susan Lambert: Yes. 

Jane Oakhill: Uh, yeah. Okay. So he's shown that, you know, even if you're not a fantastically good reader, just read a lot, you get better at all sorts of things that aren't necessarily, you know, not, not just knowledge of, of the, the topics that you are reading about, um, but you develop other, other skills as well.

Um. So it's important to, you know, not, not waste time and resources, as I say. Training things where we don't have evidence that there's a, a causal link from that skill to reading comprehension and not just the other way around though.

Susan Lambert: Can I crystallize that just a bit?

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: And say it another way.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: So if you are listening and you're a teacher in a classroom, focusing on helping students making inferences both at the local and global level would be a good use of your time. Is that right?

Jane Oakhill: Yes, it would. Yes. I think we've got, um, a lot of evidence that, that that's the case. Yes. 

Susan Lambert: And, and just to stop you here, and for our listeners, this was the real moment for me when I read your book that helped me understand the importance of, during reading, helping kids make those connections at the sentence level.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm.

Susan Lambert: And how important things like pronouns were and ensuring that, uh, they were making meaning at that level as well as sort of the, the global level.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Susan Lambert: So just another plug for your book. 

Jane Oakhill: Well, thank you. And, and, uh, a, a plug too, I think for the fact that we're often quite surprised at what children don't understand.

Susan Lambert: Yes.

Jane Oakhill: That we make a lot of assumptions about things that, that we find utterly trivial, but, um, that they're having issues with. So I think we always need to be open to that possibility. Um. Okay. Uh, then Scarborough's last strand in the language comprehension, uh, thread is, um, literacy knowledge. And again, we haven't done much on, on this.

It's obviously important, but, but one aspect of, of my research that relates to this strand is knowledge about typical tech structures. Um. So, we've shown that comprehension is related to that sort of knowledge. And interestingly, even when no written language is involved.

So for example, in one task, we got children to reorder a set of pictures to tell a coherent picture story. So it's like a, you know, a cartoon strip, but with no, no words in it. Um, and what we found was that the ability to do that was related to, uh, the children's reading comprehension skill, even though there's no reading involved. Um. So it seems that story, and more broadly, text structure understanding is important in, in, um, text comprehension.

This idea of, um, evoking some sort of framework for your understanding, so that you, you already have some, uh, at least very general framework about, um, how things might pan out. That you can slot in, in the information, uh, that from your reading. And we've, we've also got evidence that this, uh, we've specifically looked at story structure understanding rather than text structure more broadly, because that's what children age range that we were examining were more used to. But we've got evidence that story structure understanding is, is, uh, a causal factor in, in reading comprehension and development across time. Yeah. 

Susan Lambert: And that, that probably makes sense why it's, uh, really important to teach those structures, particularly informational text, because students wouldn't necessarily have as much exposure to that before coming to school? 

Jane Oakhill: No. No, no, no. And and interestingly, I think it's something that, that, um, well, I know that at least some skilled adult readers, um, don't really pay attention to. And I just, another little story that, that emphasizes this point, um, a very famous, um, U.S. professor of developmental psychology told me several years ago that he didn't realize when, and when he was doing his, I think it was his first, um, degree when he was first at university, he used to find the, the titles and subtitles in textbooks, really annoying. He just thought they were an interruption to his reading. Um, and so he used to, you know, just ignore all the titles and subtitles and get down to the real stuff in, in the paragraphs that followed them. And it took him a while to realize that actually the titles and subtitles were enormously helpful in organizing his thinking and that they were there for a purpose.

And I think, you know, if it takes someone, uh, that long, you know, someone that clever, that long to work out that, that, um, texts have, have structures that are useful and that this, this structure is usefully signaled to them, then, uh, it's certainly something that some children wouldn't be aware of. Yeah.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. Some, some good evidence for explicit, the importance of explicit and structure instruction. 

Jane Oakhill: Yeah. Yeah. Um. There was one other thing that I wanted to mention where we've done research that doesn't come into the, the rope model, but I think it is an important aspect. Um, and I, it's comprehension monitoring.

So thinking about your own comprehension, sometimes called metacognitive understanding, um, so reflecting on your own comprehension, assessing whether it's going okay or not. Um, so for instance, while reading something particularly boring, I might find that I'm actually making shopping lists and not really taking in the meaning of the text at all.

Um. So a corollary of that, uh, monitoring is knowing it's no good, just thinking,  "Oops, uh, I didn't understand that." You also need to know what to do if your comprehension's not going well. So that might mean looking up some words that you don't know, or an example I just gave, assessing where your comprehension lapsed, where you got distracted, um, and rereading, uh, from that point.

Um, and again, we found evidence that, that this skill is, is causally linked in with, um, reading comprehension, um, and progressive comprehension. And I suspect that Scarborough doesn't include comprehension monitoring in the rope model because she'd probably say, "Well, it's not specific to reading. Um, like other background factors such as motivation, executive function, socioeconomic status."

Um, so it's not to do with reading specifically, but I just wanted to mention it because, um, we've certainly found that, uh, it is important and it's, it's linked up to, um, other processes that are, um, distinctly linked to reading. 

Susan Lambert: That's very helpful. It's a, um, we just had an episode with Tim Shanahan on the 20th anniversary of the National Reading Panel, um, here in the United States, and they certainly had that finding from the National Reading Panel.

Jane Oakhill: Oh, okay. Right.

Susan Lambert: 20 years ago was that..

Jane Oakhill: Yeah.

Susan Lambert: ...metacognitive, uh, super important in terms of reading comprehension.

Jane Oakhil: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Susan Lambert: So, we've covered, um, you know, the, the language part of Scarborough's Rope, and just to mention that both the Simple View and Scarborough account for word recognition or the sounds and the letters, um, as we're, as we're starting to decode and learn how to be automatic in our reading.

So that's the other element of Scarborough. Uh, we, we appreciate your, um, overview and detailed overview of the language side of Scarborough and definitely the impact that you've had in terms of the field. Um, I just wonder if, uh, if you would share with our listeners how, you know, this information you shared with us can really help schools.

What would, what would you say to those that are working day to day in schools and classrooms as they're thinking about effective instruction, uh, as it relates to some of these elements you've discussed? 

Jane Oakhill: Hmm. Well, going back to my earlier points about processes, I, I think that the rope model is really important in helping people think about all those different skills and processes that, that are involved in reading.

So, we might know that we need to teach comprehension. But if comprehension is just this fairly amorphous, unanalyzed construct, how do we go about doing that? Um. And presumably not by repeated practice at comprehension exercises, which is just soul destroying for, for everyone. Um, because children who aren't good at comprehension are not going to do very well at comprehension exercises, so it's just going to, uh, be a soul-destroying exercise for them.

Um, and I, I think, and that's in, in the book, and it's also encapsulated in, in, um, in Scarborough's model as well. I think the, the most productive approach is to fully understand the components that make up effective comprehension and teach those. So, this is not to advocate that children should be drilled in inference, uh, sorry, in individual skills. Um, but rather that teachers should be able to select rich and interesting texts. Just allow them to teach and the children to practice many of these skills and strategies as they need them. Um, so we definitely don't want to, you know, have a sort of tick-list approach.

Okay. Well, vocabulary's really important, so we're going to do lots, and this, this week or this lesson, we will focus on, uh, some new vocabulary. Or inference is really important, so we'll do lots and lots of inference practice. I think all of all of this should be, all of the teaching should be integrated within the scope of real rich texts that allow all these processes to, to, um, you know, manifest themselves.

Um. So, I think children, um, can, these, these skills can be talked about quite explicitly at first. So in terms of, um, increasing vocabulary, we could ask children about semantic associations. You know, what does this word make you think of? Um, so not just the, the pure meaning of a word, but all those semantic links that, that go with it.

Evoking those, which would help with, with knowledge activation, for instance. Um. Asking them, stopping them, what inference did you need to make to make sense of this bit of text and talking about that. And different children might have different inferences. Which are, which are better, which, which work, which don't work and so on.

Um. But I think the important thing that, that we really need to take on board is that these skills and, um, strategies will become much more intertwined and more automatic as as time goes on. Um, and I think that children can also be alerted to these interdependencies. For instance, if they don't understand the meaning of word, they might use their inference skills to work out what some likely meanings could be in that particular context.

Or, if they detect an issue with their comprehension while they're doing their comprehension monitoring, that then might make them realize that they need to make an inference to connect up something that hadn't initially made, made sense in the text.

Um. One thing that I, I did want to, to say that, um, I have heard an occasion in, in schools in the U.K., is what we do not want to do, going back to the, uh, the word recognition strand, uh, what we do not want to do is, um, assume that we teach word recognition first, and then we do comprehension as a sort of add-on if we need to. And I have heard teachers in U.K. classrooms, when I've asked them what they do to teach comprehension, um, say things like, "Oh, oh, we don't, well, they're only, they're only seven, so they're not reading very well yet. Um, so we don't do comprehension yet. We are, we are focusing on, on the decoding to get them up to speed on decoding." And I just think that this is, that is just, um, so misguided that what we should be doing is, um, encouraging that language, all those language comprehension skills, um, at from the beginning, um, and even preschool if possible, to enable children to have that, that really rich access to, to language.

Another thing's a little bit puzzling that, that your, your listeners might wonder about, actually thinking about language comprehension, is, well, surely these kids going into school, you know, five-, six-year-olds, their language comprehension's pretty good actually. So don't we just need to teach them to recognize the words. And then all this language stuff will just kick in because they can understand language.

And so there's a little, little bit of a, I think a little bit of, um, friction here [00:47:00] between this model and that's that sort of view, that children at that age have pretty good language understanding and they're not being asked to understand books that are way beyond their capabilities. But I think, a couple of points there is that, um, that written language is not as we know, speech written down.

Susan Lambert: Right.

Jane Oakhill: Um, we don't quote, talk like books. I don't know if that's an insult in, in the U.S., but it is in the U.K. You know, "he, he talks like a book," meaning it's pretty incomprehensible. Um, so the sin, you know, people would think we were a bit odd if we spoke in book language in perfect, perfect syntax with lots of embedded relative clauses and, um, sophisticated vocabulary.

So we typically use a different, um, a, a different form of language in everyday conversations. So to some extent, children have to be introduced not just to these, these skills and strategies, but those skills and strategies in the context of book language. Um. And the other thing with book language is that you typically can't interrogate the, the book right, in, in the way that you, it's not a, a give and take, like you're having an everyday conversation.

Susan Lambert: Right.

Jane Oakhill: You are, um, you know, you are there with sometimes a very long tract of, of text, um, and you haven't got, there's no interactive element to it. So it's not just a case of, you know, teach teach them the words and the language comprehension will, will kick in. 

Susan Lambert: That's a, that's very wise. Um, which is why reading aloud to young children, especially in the, you know, the primary grades.

Jane Oakhill: Oh, yes.

Susan Lambert: Um, at, at a level that is, that is rich and and complex to help them understand academic language. 

Jane Oakhill: Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I think one take home message that, that, um, relates to that point about, about reading aloud is, is that according to both the Simple View and the rope model, an important fact in reading is language comprehension. So, and I think many teachers don't feel very comfortable with this conclusion, learning to read with good comprehension doesn't necessarily need to involve huge amounts of reading. Um, the importance of those oral language skills and talk about text language is a very important component.

Susan Lambert: Hmm. That is, uh, a very, probably a very deep and rich conversation we could have just about what you just said, because that's a, uh, a very important concept.

Jane Oakhill: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Susan Lambert: Well, um, we do appreciate you coming on and, and talking to us about both the Simple View Scarborough's Rope and what that's meant for your research.

For our listeners know that we're going to dive deeper into, uh, you know, many of these topics that we talked about today to understand more about both language comprehension and word recognition. Um, but Jane, again, thank you so much. We're going to link, link our listeners in the show notes to your book so they can, they can learn from that as I have. Um, and we just wish you a happy New Year. 

Jane Oakhill: Well, yes. Thank you and thank you for inviting me. I've, I've enjoyed talking to you, Susan. And yes, let's hope that, uh, this coming year is going to be lighter and brighter and happier for everyone. So yeah. 

Susan Lambert: I think that's a great note to end on. Take care, Jane.

Jane Oakhill: And you.

Susan Lambert: Thanks for listening and keep your feedback coming. Do you want to learn more? Be sure to stay connected by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and join our Facebook discussion group, Science of Reading the Community. Visit amplify.com to check out all our free literacy events and upcoming Science of Reading Symposium.

Until next time, keep the hope, take the action, and stay in touch.