S3-10. Deconstructing the Rope: Language structures with Kate Cain

Join Kate Cain, professor of language and literacy at Lancaster University, as she unwinds language structures, a strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope. In the latest episode of our Deconstructing the Rope series, Kate explores language structures in the simple view of reading and explains its connections across reading comprehension in literacy development. She also highlights the reciprocal relationship between books and conversation and underscores the importance of reading aloud to children from a young age to develop their vocabulary and semantics. 

Quotes:

“Simply knowing the individual word meanings and the word order alone is not going to be sufficient to have accurate sentence comprehension.”

“The language of books is different from the language of conversation.”

References:

Professor Kate Cain’s Publications Site

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] 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 are joined by Kate Cain, professor at Lancaster University in the U.K., and an expert in early reading, specifically in the area of reading comprehension. She talks a bit about her view of reading comprehension, helping understand it in a broad way. Then we dive into language structures and how they support reading comprehension.

It's a great episode, as we continue to explore more elements of language comprehension, I know you'll enjoy.

Kate Cain, we're so excited to have you on our episode today. 

[00:01:53] Kate Cain: Well, thank you so much for inviting me, Susan. I'm really looking forward to this and sharing my thoughts with your listeners. 

[00:02:00] Susan Lambert: Uh, we appreciate it so much and what we would love for you to do before we jump into our topic of the day is to tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself, maybe how did you find yourself interested in this early reading space?

[00:02:14] Kate Cain: Oh gosh, how did I get here? Um, so I guess, um, my career path has not necessarily followed my plans. Um. When I, when I was about 14, um, I decided that I wanted to be an educational psychologist, um, inspired by a book, written by an educational psychologist. So I decided to go and study psychology at University, which I started when I was 18. Um, but my, my actual degree was experimental psychology at Sussex University. So I learned a lot about experimental design, about statistics, child development, adult language development, amongst other things. But it's probably really, surprise listeners, that I did absolutely no modules on reading, development, or literacy whatsoever.

Um. And then I guess it's like, kind of through sheer serendipity, I met Jane Oakhill. She, she was actually a postdoctoral researcher at the time there at Sussex, and she supervised my final year project. Um, I mean, it wasn't actually on children's reading, it was on memory, but I, I, I mean, I just, I just loved it.

And the research bug just absolutely bit me. Um. And so after a couple of years working as a researcher, I then, um, studied for my doctorate, which was this time on reading comprehension, um, specifically children's reading comprehension difficulties, with Jane as my supervisor. Um. And I guess it was, you know, a really enjoyable and productive experience because I've continued to work on the same broad topic.

Um. And I also continue to collaborate with Jane, which, which is lovely. So never quite made it as an educational psychologist, but like to feel that what I'm doing has still got applications and is still helping children out there. 

[00:04:00] Susan Lambert: Hmm. That's fascinating. And Jane was, Jane Oakhill was another great guest who we learn a lot from all the time too.

Um, going back to this idea of the connection to memory, there is a connection to, you know, between that early work that you did with memory and, and actually how the brain learns to read. So it's not crazy that you went in a different path maybe.

[00:04:22] Kate Cain: No, no, it's not absolutely crazy. I mean, I think of memory, like working memory, as almost being like the workspace within which comprehension takes place, you know?

And obviously we build up memory representations of text as we read them. And we have this memory bank, this store of like kind of words and sort of syntax and all these different things we're going to talk about today. So yeah, no, I'm not, memory is very important in a variety of different ways for reading.

[00:04:49] Susan Lambert: Well, thank you for sharing that about yourself. And as you know, we're doing this series on Scarborough's Rope. We've dug into, you know, our listeners have been introduced to the Simple View of Reading, what it takes to develop as a proficient reader, and actually we've recently done a few episodes that dive into comprehension more specifically. Um, and we're going to get to sort of this idea of language structures with you, but before we go there, I'd just love for you to talk a little bit about what reading comprehension is. 

[00:05:23] Kate Cain: That's a nice, easy question to start with.

[00:05:26] Susan Lambert: I know it's a really small, focused question, right? 

[00:05:29] Kate Cain: Yeah. Um. Okay, so I mean like reading comprehension is obviously about understanding the meaning of a written text and, you know, as you see in a model like Scarborough's Rope, um, Reading Rope model, which you mentioned, and also, um, the Simple View of Reading. Um. Within these models, we think about these two broad sets of skills that are important. We've got the skills and the knowledge bases that enable word recognition and those that support language comprehension together. Um. These enable us to have reading comprehension, so understanding things that we read. But I think that there's a couple of like, sort of, important concepts to get across to listeners.

So, first of all, like successful comprehenders, they do not understand and remember every individual word or clause of a sentence, or even sort of like remembering, um, individual sentences in isolation. We're selecting the appropriate meanings of words in relation to the context or the topic of the text. Um. We're constructing the meanings of clauses and sentences; we're not remembering things verbatim. And then going beyond sort of like individual words and sentences, we're combining this information and we're integrating it to form a memory-based representation of the situation that's been described by the text or the state of affairs described by the text.

And we typically sort of like refer to this as a mental model or a situation model. And, and one of the things that we do to make full sense of a text and construct a fully coherent, integrated mental model is we're not just working on information within the text, we're also like drawing on general knowledge outside of the text.

And that helps us to make full sense of the events of characters', um, actions and, um, their motivations. So, you know, there's a really wide range of language skills and knowledge bases that support language comprehension. You know, and this is certainly reflected, um, in Scarborough's Rope model, where we have these different, within these two, sort of the, we have these many strands, if you like.

So we have the knowledge, such as background knowledge and knowledge of word meanings, you know, verbal reasoning, our ability to generate inferences, and also sort of language structures, semantics and syntax. 

[00:07:51] Susan Lambert: So I've heard it said that, you know, authors don't write down every single thing that the reader needs to know.

So that sort of has something to do with it too, when you're saying constructing this mental model and bringing in some general knowledge to help you with that. Um, we, we have to sort of access all of those things. 

[00:08:11] Kate Cain: Certainly. So, I mean, a successful comprehender is not passive, they are actively constructing the meaning from a text. You know, if the author wrote everything down, um, you know, it would be very boring. It would be very repetitious, you know, making everything explicit. So there's work left for the reader to do to sort of like fully understand that text and construct the mental model. 

[00:08:36] Susan Lambert: Hmm. I like how you said that there's, there's work left for the reader to do, and some of that work involves language structures. So what, what, what do we mean by language structures and, and maybe how are they helpful and important for readers? 

[00:08:52] Kate Cain: Okay. Um, so if we think about the rope model, the language structures are referred to there. We think of semantics and we think of syntax. So, let's start with semantics, um, and think about its relation to both vocabulary and comprehension, I think would be useful.

And then move on to thinking about syntax. Um, and I think it's important to note to listeners that researchers are not always precise. We can be a little bit sloppy in the language we use and I think there can be a lot of confusion because sometimes vocabulary and semantics are used somewhat interchangeably.

But what we're really talking about with vocabulary, we are referring to the words that a child has got in their lexicon. What words do they know with semantic skills, we're referring to the ability to understand these words and use them appropriately. You know, and a good example that's often used, it's like, there's a world of difference between saying, I robbed a bank and a bank robbed me.

Um. You know, so it's actually sort of like that appropriate use. But, but when we are thinking about the study of semantics, we're often also talking about semantic relations. So we have some words are associated because they often occur together in texts because they actually kind of like occur together are in, in, in place. So collocations, think of like sandcastle and beach. And we have other words that might be associated because they share features. So you can think of different shades of meaning if you like. So cry, sob, wail, all to do with sort of like expressing, um, that emotion. And then other words can have related, but also distinct meaning. So think of wave. You can wave hello, you can have a wave in the ocean, you can have a sound wave.

And I think it can get a little bit confusing when we are thinking about the relation with comprehension, because we often talk about, um, vocabulary breadth; how many words does a child know the meaning of? And also vocabulary depth; what does a child know about these words? And often then we are really talking about semantics. 

[00:11:10] Susan Lambert: Ahh. 

[00:11:10] Kate Cain: And this idea that sort of one... one of the things I think is important to get across is that comprehension of text is really enriched by access to having a lexicon of word meanings that we can use precisely, but also flexibly.

We of, we have a lot of words in our language that have multiple meanings, and it's also enriched by having these rich semantic networks where, um, we have links between these related words, um, as I was sort of explaining before.

And, in, if you think about specifically in relation to comprehension and why this is so important, I mean, some of the work that I've, um, conducted with Jane, actually, we've looked at this relation between, um, vocabulary breadth, and depth to inference-making with vocabulary depth. We're thinking about these rich semantic networks and these associations, the children are actually able to use these words appropriately.

And we, we looked at that in relation to another important comprehension skill, which is inference-making. And we actually found that vocabulary depth—so children's knowledge about multiple meanings of words and the relations between different words and you know, the precise context in which they should be used—was a stronger predictor of some aspects of inference-making than simply vocabulary breadth word knowledge alone. So children who have these sort of like richer semantic networks are more likely to make critical inferences that are filling in sort of missing detail. I mean, you said earlier about, you know, like an author doesn't necessarily include all the details in a text.

So the way we've looked at this, um, experimentally is we've deliberately, um, written texts that keep some details, um, missing. So we might talk about somebody having a new pet. Never specifying what that pet is. But when you have words such as furry or bark or kennel appearing in that story, it's a pretty good bet that the new pet is actually a dog.

[00:13:14] Susan Lambert: Yeah right.

[00:13:14] Kate Cain: And, and, and children who have these richer semantic networks are much more likely to make those types of critical inferences. So they've actually got a coherent mental model rather than something that's a bit sort of like underspecified and fuzzy if you like. So it's, you know, this is kind of, let these different strands—and it's maybe something we'll get onto later—like kind of the, these different strands in the Reading Rope are kind of like really entwined with each other, because comprehension is enabled by having sort of, you know, sorry, comprehension is enabled by having access to this sort of like rich semantic network. And one of those comprehension skills, inference-making in particular, is, is really enabled by that. So semantic knowledge enables better overall reading comprehension in general. 

[00:14:05] Susan Lambert: Hmm. Can I stop you for just a second?

[00:14:07] Kate Cain: Sure, sure.

[00:14:08] Susan Lambert: Yeah, we just, um, the last episode actually, we had Nancy Hennessy on and she was specifically talking about vocabulary, mentioned some of the, you know, similar things to what you're talking about, but I just, I just want to reiterate this point that when we look at the strands, um, in, in the Reading Rope, that, yes, they are discreet, but the interconnection of all of them and how much more powerful they begin to be as they weave together to make strength of comprehension.

[00:14:38] Kate Cain: I, I, I think that's a really critical point because we see it not just when you are understanding a text as you're reading it, we actually see these relations over time.

So some of the work that I've done following children longitudinally and looking at skills, such as vocabulary and inference-making, we find that early vocabulary predicts their later inference-making skill because they've got these rich semantic networks that enable them to fill in missing details in a text.

And then we also find that their early inference skills predict their later sort of depth of vocabulary knowledge, presumably because, and, and presumably it's because, you know, as ... we don't spell out every detail in a text, and we have a lot of rare and infrequent words that we see in text, so you can use these skills—your inferential skills—to derive the meanings of unfamiliar words.

So we can have the, you know, these beautiful sort of reciprocal relations between these different strands across time. And I think it really demonstrates the importance of having that sort of comprehensive curriculum, if you like, that is fostering all of these different elements which combined go to create a successful reading comprehender.

[00:15:58] Susan Lambert: That's fascinating and, and two words there really resonate with me. First of all, the reciprocal nature of all of these things; how one relates to the other building one helps build the other. But also the, the term flexibility that you used in relationship to semantics, um, and extending vocabulary. Um, being flexible in your use of words. I think that's really powerful. 

[00:16:23] Kate Cain: Well, it's, it's very important because although we want children to have very precise knowledge, the meaning of a word and the emphasis on a word is very dependent on context. So obviously we have meaning words with multiple meanings, such as wave. 

[00:16:41] Susan Lambert: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:42] Kate Cain: And in order to either understand that word or use that word like in in production, to be able to use it flexibly, you actually have to appreciate the context. So whether it's like wave hello, or like kind of wave, um, in the ocean or a sound wave for example. And it's these different sort of it, and that is, you know, that richness enables you to have that flexibility, but you obviously need to have that sort of distinct, precise knowledge about the meanings of each of those different uses of a word like wave. 

[00:17:23] Susan Lambert: Hmm. Wow. So there's a lot more to semantics than just the word meaning. That's pretty deep.

[00:17:31] Kate Cain: Yeah, it certainly is.

[00:17:33] Susan Lambert: Um, so the other part of language structure then that you mentioned is actually syntax. What is syntax? 

[00:17:40] Kate Cain: Oh gosh. Well, here's another place where we can be a bit sloppy because we talk about grammar, we talk about syntax, um, and people will use them interchangeably.

But, um, I like to think of, and I'm, I'm, I'm supported in this by some other people, that where we're talking about grammar, we're talking about like kind of the set of rules that are talking about, you know, the correct sort of standard, um, use in a language. When we're talking about syntax, we're talking about the study of sentences, sentence structure, we're thinking about sort of constructions within sentences. Um, and I think, you know, sentences are often ignored, actually, sentence comprehension. I, I, I'll try and remember to say a bit about why I think it's, um, ignored in a bit. But if you think about like, kind of as you're reading a text and as I was, um, explaining earlier, you know, you're reading the words on the page and you're having to organize them into these meaningful units, you know, like noun phrases, clauses, multi-clause sentences. And these are the foundations to then understanding these paragraphs and passages. So understanding at the sentence level, it, it's absolutely critical for good text comprehension, you know, passage comprehension. But, but one of the things, um, that we have in the majority of languages, um, and it's a very nice feature, um, but it is that languages allow flexibility in how we actually convey meaning.

So simply knowing the, um, individual word meanings and attention to the word order alone is not going to be sufficient to have accurate sentence comprehension. You know, so a really good example of this that, that most listeners are probably familiar with is just thinking about the difference between the passive and the active voice.

So, you know, the tiger was chased by the bear. Um. You cannot simply understand who was doing the chasing by word order alone. And you find that sort of children, typically, they understand and also produce these like simpler sentence constructions, um, such as like sort of the active earlier than something, um, like the passive.

I mean, another example is sort of embedded clauses, um, which are often included in assessments of syntax. But so, um, an example is like the, the girl standing beside the woman was wearing a red dress, who, who's, who's wearing the red dress? Well, if you don't get the embedded clause standing beside the woman, you may misinterpret that sentence and not be able to sort of answer the question about who's wearing the red dress.

And it's...

[00:20:33] Susan Lambert: Thank goodness you didn't ask me who was wearing the red dress because I was trying to visualize it and I wasn't sure that I was keeping track. 

[00:20:39] Kate Cain: I, but, but this is it. I mean, that's where memory comes in.

[00:20:42] Susan Lambert: Right.

[00:20:42] Kate Cain: You know, you, you, you have to keep track of these things. Um, and so sometimes, as I said, like kind of readers, um, have to be active.

And so in order to have, so that your representation is valid, is real, is in, you know, like the correct sequence, you're, you're having to manipulate those words and extract the meaning of them to integrate them. So, I mean, a good example of this is thinking about, um, the use of conjunctions or inter-clause or connectives.

So, you know, we experience our world in chronological order, you know, you have morning, you have afternoon, you have evening. But we can express the temporal sequence of events that have actually happened in our day in chronological order, or also in reverse order. Um, and so word order alone doesn't always enable you to work out the actual meaning and sequence and time.

I mean, it's something that a Ph.D. student of mine recently did work on with, um, children, sort of like 3 to 9 years of age. So, you know, obviously sometimes we, our general knowledge helps us, you know, like: He put on his shoes after he put on his socks. It's in reverse order, but your general knowledge enables you to understand what's going on.

[00:22:00] Susan Lambert: Yeah.

[00:22:00] Kate Cain: What about: He played outside after he finished his homework? You know, you don't necessarily know. You can't do it through word order, you can't do it through general knowledge, to actually extract the precise meaning of that sentence. You've got to know the meaning of this single word, whether it's before, whether it's after, and that will signal to you, um, whether, you know, what the actual temporal sequence of events is. Now in, you know, I've given, um, some maybe silly examples there, but it can be, you know, quite superficial perhaps. But the, but this can be really important, um, for readers to understand, particularly when it comes to understanding causality and when there is a temporal sequence that's leading to causality.

Um. And I think, you know, it might sound, "Oh God, this is an awful lot for children and, and for readers to do and take in." But, and, and it's all very, very complex and difficult, but one of the really good things is that, particularly when you think about inter-clauses or connectives in conjunctions, you can think about them as being, they're, they're often referred to as being a cohesive device. Um, maybe like, you know, similar to pronouns. They're actually, they could be used by the author to actually signal things to the reader about how to relate things. So, you know, like a pronoun, if you've got "it," or "he" or "she," it's telling you that it's referring back to something in a previous part of the text.

[00:23:32] Susan Lambert: Right.

[00:23:33] Kate Cain: So it's signposting to a reader. It's giving you some clues and instructions, um, to be able to do that in integration. Um. So, you know, these sort of like cohesive devices, they're not, they're not there to trip us up. They can actually be there as useful signposts, that's how I like to think of them, signaling some of the work that you've got to do in order to understand the text.

[00:24:00] Susan Lambert: Hmm. And then readers that are paying attention, so you mention that a few times, readers that are paying attention recognize these signposts and if they have some sort of, uh, ambiguity or are unclear about how it relates, they actually know to go back and reread. Right? Like a signal to go back and reread and figure something out.

[00:24:24] Kate Cain: Yeah. So I mean, there's two things there. One is the attention part, you know, attending to the precise particular words, such as "before" and "after." And the other one is reflecting on the quality of your understanding, evaluating how well you've understood something, often referred to as comprehension monitoring.

And a reader who is monitoring their comprehension will be aware if there's been a misinterpretation, for example, and will then go back in the text. Just like a reader who is monitoring their comprehension and who has that metacognitive awareness of these sorts of signals in text will use them in order to ensure that they're integrating information across clauses, across sentence boundaries, and into this mental model of the text. 

[00:25:17] Susan Lambert: Hmm. So, um, I'm just going to say back to you a couple of things that I heard. Early in our conversation we were talking about what reading comprehension is, and you mentioned, you know, as readers, we don't actually remember individual phrases or individual sentences, rather, we use those to construct a mental model of, of the text. And then you've told us that sentence level, paying attention at the sentence level to use, you know, semantics and, and then also understanding syntax or the words in the sentence—so paying attention at the sentence level is actually super important to building that mental model of comprehension.

So, number one, do I have that right? And number two, it feels like then some sort of focus and instruction at sentence-level comprehension is important. 

[00:26:14] Kate Cain: Yes. So what you've, uh... paying attention at the sentence level is very important because there can be these critical clues in there, these signals. And you've got to understand temporal sequences, you have to understand causal sequences, you have to know who is doing what to whom in the individual sentence. But what we then do, and unless we are learning a text, because we're an actor on the stage, for example, we don't remember things verbatim.

[00:26:45] Susan Lambert: Yeah.

[00:26:45] Kate Cain: So in our mental model of the text, we don't actually encode whether "before" or "after" was used, or whether a pronoun was used. What we actually represent is the state of affairs that was described in the text, that you can only accurately represent the state of affairs described in the text if you have resolved your pronouns to, um, like kind of, the correct item in the text.

You can only have an accurate mental representation of what, of the events in the text and their sequence and the causal links, if you have paid attention to those interclausal connectives, even though you may not actually be storing that precise linguistic information in your mental model. Does that make sense? 

[00:27:38] Susan Lambert: It does make sense and it, it helps me understand how a couple of things, one thing is if you get that sentence-level comprehension, I, I think you refer to it as process, right? Like so during reading, if you get that comprehension wrong, you are going to get a wrong mental model of the overall gist of the text. Is that right? 

[00:28:02] Kate Cain: Yes. It's one of the interesting things. One of the things I'm interested in is the dynamics of reading, both, sort of like within a text and across time. So if you think about reading a text, the reader's constructing this mental model, this sort of like meaning-based representation, you know, word by word, sentence by sentence as the text unfolds. So if you misinterpret a word or a sentence early on in the text, the downstream effect is you may therefore not understand other key things later in that text. And what we find thinking about this idea of comprehension monitoring and evaluating your comprehension, that's what's done by skill comprehenders, and they can recover from these mistakes.

So they, but we all make mistakes and misinterpretations when we read, but because we're evaluating our comprehension, we can recover from that mistake by sort of like going back and checking the text. But a poor comprehender is less likely to do so. So poor understanding early on in a text can have significant downstream effects of their understanding of like the overall point or gist of the text. 

[00:29:09] Susan Lambert: Yeah. Hmm. That's got me thinking back to the interaction between the strands, because what you just said was, word level. So we have to have sort of that foundational skills word level under our belts. We also then have to have this idea of sentence-level syntax, semantics under our belt in order to get to that comprehension. So all that to say what you've already said is that all these things actually work together to help us. 

[00:29:40] Kate Cain: They do, they all work together and, and often what we're talking about when we're in, in our research studies and when we're talking to educators, we do talk about these things distinctly. You, you sometimes I think we can be guilty of maybe sort of putting them in silos, if you like.

[00:29:57] Susan Lambert: Yeah.

[00:29:57] Kate Cain: But they are all important. So they can all have unique influences. They're all doing their work. Um, but you know, they're working together because understanding a text involves so many different skills and knowledge bases. So it would be wrong for a curriculum to entirely focus on building up semantic skills or vocabulary knowledge and neglecting those other components.

It would be, you know, like kind of entirely wrong just to focus on that sentence level or just to focus on that background knowledge level. We are using these different skills and knowledge bases dynamically as the text unfolds in order to construct this mental representation. So it's complex, but that complexity... you know, I mean some, one of one of the, um, analogies that I used, um, in my writing was like thinking of, of an orchestra. And in an orchestra you have like, kind of, you've got the string section, you've got the wood section, you've got kinds of, you know, your percussion. You have all of these different elements and they all come together to produce this beautiful music, this beautiful symphony. One of them on their own, you know, they might be doing some work and maybe providing a melody or providing like kind of, you know, like kind of the temporal beat.

[00:31:21] Susan Lambert: Right.

[00:31:22] Kate Cain: But on their own, they're sort of you, you only get part of the story. You need all of them coming together to get that overall whole. And one of the things that is just fascinating as a skilled comprehender is the way that we just, you know, like we draw on these different skills and knowledge bases as we are reading a text and constructing its meaning. And it seems almost seamless and it can be really difficult for us as skilled comprehenders to reflect on this and think, "Oh, I'm retrieving a word meaning here, and, oh, I'm applying a bit of syntactic launch here. Oh, I'm generating an inference." But it all becomes as, as we see in in the rope model, these are all intertwined and they become very much sort of like automatic. We, we are using them spontaneously as we need to, as and when, during text processing. 

[00:32:13] Susan Lambert: Yeah, that's funny to think about the, the, um, you know, as I'm learning more and more about what it takes to, to learn how to read and, and all the complex systems that are in play, I still don't sit down when I actually read and start to apply those things, like you said. I thought maybe, oh, like the more I learn about it, then it's going to get in, in the way of me actually sitting down and enjoying reading, but it actually doesn't. So yeah. Thank goodness.

Um, I'm going to ask you another question too about like, what, what does this mean for, for writing? When we think about syntax and semantics, and we're talking about constructions of sentences, I'm assuming the reciprocal relationship also, um, extends to both reader and as, as as writer. 

[00:33:05] Kate Cain: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that can be quite useful to actually create awareness for the child, um, or the learning reader of some of these things, is exploring writing and actually, um, writing themselves. We don't always do it very well in that we say, you know, children are given exercises in sort of putting in lots of exciting, um, like connectives into a text or using varied vocabulary. But if, but if you do it right and you actually get them thinking and reflecting as they're constructing their own text, then that can feed in to their reading, because by deconstructing the text, um, on a page as a reader, that can enhance your writing. And then by producing written text, you can understand better why that particular device or construction is being used, um, like kind of in the text that you are reading. So you can actually help to generate insight.

Um. And you know, there, there, there is work looking at those, um, interrelations between reading and writing. You know, again, we, we sometimes separate them. But we really need to think about them together and how they can support each other in, in development. 

[00:34:27] Susan Lambert: Hmm. That's a really good point. Um, it's, it's hard work teaching kids how to read and write.

Um, but it's, it's so helpful to sort of pull back the curtain a little bit and understand a little more about, about, um, the importance of language structures for sure, but also the connections, uh, across comprehension. Um, I'm wondering, um, I know this is, this is a tough question too, but if you were going to give our listeners like maybe a couple ideas or concepts or takeaways, what, what would you think would be the most important thing for them to remember as it relates to language structures?

[00:35:07] Kate Cain: Um. So one of the things, but I haven't yet done said, and I, I, I think this is important to mention, and it is quite important as take-home message is that we, we talk about language comprehension, we talk about language structures, we talk about the language basis of reading comprehension. So we think when children start formal literacy instructions, you know that they already have their vocabulary knowledge, they have their semantics, they have their grammar and syntax, and certainly they're bringing years of experience in developing language, both sort of for understanding and production to the task of learning to read. But one of the really important things, and again we get to sort of reciprocal relations here, is thinking about how the language of books is different to the language of conversation.

[00:35:54] Susan Lambert: Yes.

[00:35:54] Kate Cain: And that is particularly important when you think about semantics and you think about syntax. So if you're reading a book, you are going to encounter many more and less frequent words in a book than in an adult conversation. And you even find that in comparisons of children's books to adult conversation. It's quite, um, embarrassing in a way how impoverished adult conversation is.

Um. And, and, and you find the same with sentence structures. So you have some sentence structures, like as sort of the passive structure and the relative clauses, are much more likely to feature in books than in conversation. This is one of the reasons these sorts of things can trip children up when they're learning to read because they haven't had as much exposure.

So I think, you know, it's really important to remember this. And it's really important to be reading to children from a young age to develop their knowledge of these sorts of language structures in books to be providing that exposure to the language of books, um, because some of this is going to be developed through reading experience.

Um. And I think the other thing, thinking specifically, sort of, about classroom teachers, obviously you have very wide variation in reading ability in any classroom. But reading isn't just about children reading alone or reading to someone else, you can actually read to them.

So you can actually read books that might be beyond some of the individuals word reading level, but is, you know, of a suitable content, a suitable topic, um, for their particular age group. So you can provide exposure to these really rich language structures. And also, you know, like pause and have conversations about why was that particular word chosen or why do you think the author has phrased this in a particular way?

So you can actually provide that exposure to all of the children in a classroom, even those who are the poorer word readers, and support, um, the development of knowledge of these language structures and their reading comprehension through that kind of listening task and interaction. 

[00:38:02] Susan Lambert: Hmm. Both really, really good points. And maybe not only can you do that, you probably should be doing that in your classrooms with the early readers to help them start developing, um, you know, better language structures, uh, and hear them modeled. Um. One thing I was talking about with Nancy Hennessy in the last episode too, was this idea that our language continues to develop as long as we are continuing to be learners. So I would imagine this also applies to both syntax and semantics or language structures, that we're never really quite done learning them. 

[00:38:42] Kate Cain: That that's a really good point. So, um, some of this has been looked at in work, um, by, starting off with Keith Stanovich, um, and colleagues thinking about sort of, um, Matthew Effects. And the idea with the Matthew Effects comes from the Bible the rich get rich; the poor get poorer. And what you find, what what they found in their work was that individuals who read more, so they have more exposure to the rich language of books, concurrently and then longitudinally over time, they develop better, um, vocabulary skills, better general knowledge, actually better, um, spelling and word reading skills. So it kind of emphasizes this point of the importance of exposure to books. And it's because something such as sort of like vocabulary or um, like kind of semantics is what can be referred to as, um, an unconstrained skill. So you can think of a constrained skill as being something like learning your letters of the alphabet. There's a fixed number of letters, typically, everybody learns them, and you learn them within a short period of time. But as you quite rightly pointed out, you can continue learning words throughout your lifetime and hopefully, uh, we, we, we all do this and you can learn also just more shades of meaning and nuances of particular words. And you get, I mean, I find this in my own writing, you know, it continues to develop, and I continue to say this to sort of like my students that you know, your writing development doesn't stop at the end of like your Ph.D. or at the end of your postdoc. It continues throughout your lifetime is we are exposed to different ways of expressing things, and as we're exposed to, sort of like, new words. So that's this idea of this sort of like unconstrained skill, as you say, you can just keep learning and learning and developing and improving. 

[00:40:38] Susan Lambert: Hmm. That, that feels exciting to me.

Um, all right. Finally, um, I'd love to ask you if you're doing any, anything, any new research you're doing or any new exciting developments you've seen or heard about that you're, uh, that makes you interested and curious. 

[00:40:59] Kate Cain: Okay, so I guess that there's a couple of, um, projects, um, on the go at the moment that uh, uh, are exciting and I think kind of like really important. One of them is, I'm, I'm involved in a longitudinal project in which we've been following a group of children in the U.S. from when they were in, um, preK, so like, sort of 4 to 5 years of age. And you know, in this original project, we were looking at the language basis of reading comprehension.

There's actually two groups of children that we've been following. One monolingual, um, group of children who were speaking American English when they started in preK. The other sample was Spanish speakers at the start of the study, but have been educated in English. They started off in preK. We are now reassessing these kids in grade nine.

[00:41:50] Susan Lambert: Wow.

[00:41:50] Kate Cain: Um. So we've got this like amazing, like kind of, window of development and so now we're looking at much more sort of advanced-level text comprehension and quite a wide range of sort of cognitive and psychological factors, in addition to measures of language and literacy. And we're hoping that, you know, we're going to, our intention is to develop more sort of complete and comprehensive understanding of reading comprehension in early adolescence. And also to be able to identify early on, children who are at risk of poor reading comprehension by mapping these relations over time. So, you know, we know that with intervention it's much better to intervene early and it's much better to have a targeted intervention.

Well, if we can actually identify, you know, children even before formal literacy instruction has really started when they're in preK, what are the particular sort of like skills or weaknesses that put them at risk of being, you know, having poor reading comprehension later on? That will really help us to sort of like, reduce these attainment gaps and um, like give targeted instruction. So that, so that, that's one of the things.

[00:43:01] Susan Lambert: That's exciting.

[00:43:02] Kate Cain: And I can, we can also in this, and one of the, the, the things that is really neat is being able to also look at these reciprocal relations over time, you know, I was talking about like vocabulary and inference. Because we've got these measures, um, at, you know, like kind of every time we sample the children, we, we, we take these measures so we can actually look at these interdependencies and see how, like kind of these different elements of the strand, if you like, are contributing at different age groups. How they're contributing over time? How they're supporting the development of each other?

Um. So that's a sort of a, a "watch this space," um, sort of like big project. We've published some work on it under the, um, the Language and Reading Research Consortium. And then our, our, our current funding, as I say, we are, we're going back to them in grade nine. Um.

[00:43:53] Susan Lambert: That's great.

[00:43:54] Kate Cain: Yeah. So, so it's really, and the, the other thing I'm doing at the moment, we are just starting out, but I think this is going to prove really, really exciting. I'm working with some, um, absolute, um, experts in statistics who do very sort of like precise analysis of interdependencies in trying to find like change points within sort of like, um, development. So you can see where, where something changes, because we don't just simply like kind of learn in this sort of like, and develop in this nice linear way.

You know, sometimes there can be sort, you know, a very steep rise in your ability in something. What levers that? What triggers that? What enables you to suddenly step up to that different level? Or what for some children actually prevents them from stepping up to that different level? And so we're just beginning some work now doing sort of a big data project, if you like, looking, um, to understand again, like sort of how one aspect of literacy is interacting and influencing another over time to look at these change points. And again, I think this is really going to help to inform the evidence base that we need to reduce the attainment gap. 

[00:45:04] Susan Lambert: That is really exciting and we can't, we can't wait to hear more. So that gives us a reason to come back and, and talk with you another time.

[00:45:12] Kate Cain: Yeah, the, the, the statistics involved means that I'm learning a lot more about numbers as well as about reading and comprehension these days. 

[00:45:20] Susan Lambert: Lifelong learning. Right?

[00:45:21] Kate Cain: Exactly.

[00:45:22] Susan Lambert: Lifelong learning. Well, Kate, it's been a pleasure. We do thank you so much for joining. Um, we appreciate your insight and particularly appreciate the work that you're doing for kids.

[00:45:35] Kate Cain: Wonderful. Well, well, thank you so much, Susan. I mean, I've really enjoyed having this chat and, um, sharing some of my knowledge with you and your listeners. Thank you. 

[00:45:43] Susan Lambert: Thank you again.

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