Effective teaching of inference skills and strategies for reading

A study investigated the inference strategies used by sixth grade students reading narratives, and the results were compared with the inference strategies identified as those used by skilled adult readers. Subjects, 80 sixth grade students from two Canadian urban centers were divided into two groups: 40 high-proficiency readers and 40 low-proficiency readers. Equal * from the original document. *

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This research aims to reveal the extent to which inference-making ability predicts reading comprehension skill. The research participants consisted of 117 middle-grade students attending 5th and 6th grades. The data was collected by Inference-Making Ability Test and Reading Comprehension Test. The tests were administered to the respondents in a single session and the answers were interpreted by two evaluators. The answers provided by the participants were imported into a statistical software after being coded and were analyzed. The research findings showed that the participants had poor level of inference-making ability. Whereas reading comprehension skills of the participants was at a medium level. While especially lexical inferencing was achieved at a satisfying level, propositional and pragmatic inferencing could not be attained at sufficient levels. The research results assert that inference-making ability predicted reading comprehension skill at a medium level. In light of this finding, it was recommended to introduce and include inference-making strategy in reading and literacy education so that the level of reading comprehension skill would be enhancedges.

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Reading comprehension is a very complex process that depends on a number of cognitive and metacognitive skills and processes, the crucial ones being inference skills. The paper presents the results of a study that aimed to identify the inference skills of young learners of English as a foreign language in comprehending a narrative text (a comic strip). The participants were 90 young learners aged 11, drawn from a state primary school in Serbia. The post-reading reflection protocol was used to collect qualitative data on the participants' inference skills, while quantitative data were collected by means of a reading task. The results indicate that successful readers applied a variety of inference skills, flexibly combining local inferences (referential, case and antecedent causal inferences) with global inferences (superordinate goal, thematic, and character emotional reaction inferences), and monitoring their comprehension while reading. By contrast, less successful readers relied mainly on local inferences, not monitoring their understanding, which resulted in poor scores in the reading test. The study highlights the need for integrating the development of young English language learners' inference skills into reading programmes. young English language learners, reading comprehension, post-reading reflection protocol, local and global inferences, world knowledge. introduction Reading Comprehension and Inference Skills Reading comprehension is a very complex process that depends on a number of cognitive and metacognitive skills and processes, the crucial ones being inference skills. Reading knowledge and skills of successful readers operate very quickly in working memory at lower and higher level processing, resulting in text comprehension through the formation of a text model of reading comprehension (Grabe & Stoller, 2011; Nation, 2005). The reader's background knowledge (schema) and inference skills help the formation of a situation model of reader interpretation, without which comprehension is rather shallow (Kintsch & Rawson, 2005). The construction of a textbase and situation model in reading comprehension is very much dependent on inferencing, i.e. "the ability to use two or more

2013

This article aims at discussing the importance of inferences in the reading process, some of their classificatory aspects, and some pedagogical implications the knowledge of inference can rouse. Firstly, definitions for reading are presented and also important factors that can influence the reading process are discussed. Secondly, the definition of inference and its importance in the process of reading is approached. Thirdly, it is presented and discussed, based on theoretical perspectives, why readers made inferences. After this, the points discussed are the main kinds of inferences and their classification concerning their location in the text, their moment of occurrence, and also concerning their validity or non-validity. Finally, the article presents some pedagogical implications the knowledge of inference and their usage can cause, stressing the fact that students can produce much more in their educational process if they are aware of the advantages they can take of inferences ...

2016

Abstract: This study aimed at examining the effectiveness of the directed reading–thinking activity (DRTA) to enhance L2 learners’ inference skills in reading. 69 students of two classes in a junior high school in Jakarta participated in this study. Each class was randomly assigned into the experimental and control group. The experimental group was treated through the DRTA method and the control group was taught by using the regular method. Both the experimental and control groups were given the pre-test and post-test. The reading materials given in the treatment, pre-test, and post-test were the same for both groups. The result of the post-test showed that the mean score of the experimental group (M = 19.14) was significantly higher than that of the control group (M = 15.29) (t (44.155) = 3.867, p<0.05). Correspondingly, the chi-square test showed that there were significant differences between the experimental and control group in the ability to answer the inferential comprehen...

English Language Teaching, 2013

This study aimed to explore inference strategies necessary to successfully read journal articles. Eighty-eight graduate students read a set of texts on education and economic growth and answered comprehension questions. Twenty-four of these participants also volunteered for an in-depth interview. The findings revealed that students usually relied on their bottom-up processing. They skipped difficult parts, especially technical information and graphic illustrations. They sought help from friends to enhance their understanding. Overall, they were successful at interpreting the thesis statement, the gist of the section, the meaning of the tested words and clause. However, they were less able to infer the underlying argument, the tone of the article, and the attitudes of others toward the research findings. A substantial number of students also failed to utilize information from section headings and the organization of research articles to guide their reading tasks.

Skill in generating inferences predicts reading comprehension for students in the elementary and intermediate grades even after taking into account word reading, vocabulary knowledge, and cognitive ability (Cain et al., Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 671–81, 2004; Kendeou et al., Journal of Research in Reading, 31, 259–72, 2008; Oakhill and Cain, Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(2), 91–121, 2012; Oakhill et al., Language and Cognitive Processes, 18, 443–468, 2003). While research shows that struggling readers are less likely than proficient readers to make inferences when reading text (Cain et al., Memory and Cognition, 29, 850–859, 2001; Oakhill, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 54, 31–39, 1984), struggling readers may also benefit more from inference instruction than do proficient readers (Hansen and Pearson, Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(6), 821–829, 1983; McGee and Johnson, Educational Psychology, 23(1), 49–59, 2003; Raphael and Pearson, American Educational Research Journal, 22(2), 217–235, 1985; Yuill and Oakhill, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2, 33–45, 1988). This synthesis assessed (a) the effectiveness of inference instruction in improving reading outcomes for struggling readers and (b) the features of instructional interventions (e.g., duration, type of instruction) that were associated with improved outcomes. One single-case design and eight experimental group design studies were synthesized. Mean effect sizes for group design studies ranged from g=0.72* to g=1.85* for researcher-developed measures of inferential reading comprehension and from g=−.03 to g=1.96* for standardized measures of reading comprehension. The percentage of non- overlapping data for the study that employed a single-case design was 100 % for all measures.

2019

Inference skill is one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension. Still, there is little rigorous research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension. There is no research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension for English learners with reading comprehension difficulties. The current study investigated the effects of small-group inference instruction on the inference generation and reading comprehension of sixth-and seventh-grade students who were below-average readers (M = 86.7, SD = 8.1). Seventy-seven percent of student participants were designated limited English proficient. Participants were randomly assigned to 24, 40-min sessions of the inference instruction intervention (n = 39) or to business-as-usual English language arts instruction (n = 39). Membership in the treatment condition statistically significantly predicted higher outcome score on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test Reading Comprehension subtest (d = 0.60, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.16, 1.03]), but not on the other measures of inference skill.

International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences between readers with different levels of comprehension skill when engaging in a causal questioning activity during reading, and the varied effects on inference generation. Fourth-grade readers (n = 74) with different levels of comprehension skill read narrative texts aloud and were asked causal questions at specific points during reading. Responses to questions were examined for the types of inferences the readers made during reading. There was no main effect of comprehension skill in terms of readers' text-based inferences made in response to the causal questions. However, readers differed in their use of knowledge-based inferences in response to the causal questions, and in particular knowledge-based inferences that connected to related text information. Results are discussed in terms of individual differences that can influence attempts at maintaining coherence during reading.

Website Universiteit Utrecht, 2024

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