SUBJECT: ABILITY COURSE 2 (AB2)

READING AND REFLECTING ON

TEXTS

TASK 3:

READ A PASSAGE AND ANALYSE THE SAME

USING DAVIS’ NINE COMPONENT SKILLS OF
COMPREHENSION FOR UNDERSTANDING
THE TEXT

Name of Student: Ms. Priya Sujeet Singh

Class: SY B.Ed. (2024-25)

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 Certificate
This is to certify that Ms. Priya Sujeet Singh of the
class SY B.Ed. (2024-25) has successfully
completed the task/ Activity/ Test/ Case Study/
Project Work of the subject READING AND
REFLECTING ON TEXTS on the topic/ title
READ A PASSAGE AND ANALYSE THE
SAME USING DAVIS’ NINE COMPONENT
SKILLS OF COMPREHENSION FOR
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT

__________________ ______________
Authority Signature Principal
& Stamp

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TASK 3: READ A PASSAGE AND ANALYSE THE
SAME USING DAVIS’ NINE COMPONENT
SKILLS OF COMPREHENSIN FOR
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
INTRODUCTION:

The Davis reading skills test, Form D is examined in an attempt to

resolve the controversy between those who claim it measures a single
factor of reading comprehension and those who claim it measures
more than 1 factor. The controversy appears to have been resolved
using a latent trait model and by showing that from one perspective,
the test can be viewed as measuring a unidimensional skill while that
from a second perspective, it can be viewed as measuring a series of
different skills. With respect to the first perspective, the results of 188
subjects ranging from year 9 to first year tertiary students show that
76 of the 96 items on the test conform to Rasch latent trait model.
With respect to the second perspective, the same results show that the
items tend to cluster into levels on the single dimension; and the
interpretation of these clusters is relatively consistent with the notion
that these skills are at different levels of a hierarchical structure.
WHAT IS COMPREHENSION?
One of the earliest recorded studies of reading as reasoning was that
of THORNDIKE in 1917. The first factorial study of comprehension
in reading was made by DAVIS in 1941. A factorial study means that
an attempt has been made to separate the component parts of reading
in order to discover what the statistical values are of the various kinds
of things one does that helps him to comprehend while reading. For
example, it is obvious that one of the factors in reading would be
vocabulary. What are the other factors? These are the kinds of

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questions that a factorial analysis of reading attempts to answer.
DAVIS's study indicated that reading behaviour was related to the
psychological aspects of reasoning as well as to the ocular and
mechanical. DAVIS hypothesized nine variables but found that only
five met his criteria, i.e., five were significant. They are given below:

1. Vocabulary-knowledge of word meanings

2. Verbal reasoning-being able to reason with words.
3. Sensitivity to implications-being able to understand implications, or
what a writer implies.
4. Following the structure of passage-to know how it is structured and
being able to follow the structure.
5. Recognizing the literary techniques of the writer.
THE FOLLOWING ARE NINE COMPONENTS OF
EFFECTIVE READING INSTRUCTION.
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1. Phonemic awareness, letter knowledge, and concepts of print
Phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge account for more of
the variation in early reading and spelling success than general
intelligence, overall maturity level, or listening comprehension. They
are the basis for learning an alphabetic writing system. Children who
have poorly developed phonemic awareness at the end of kindergarten
are likely to become poor readers. Explicit instruction in sound
identification, matching, segmentation, and blending, when linked
appropriately to sound-symbol association, reduces the risk of reading
failure and accelerates early reading and spelling acquisition for all
children.
2. The alphabetic code: Phonics and decoding
In addition to phoneme awareness and letter knowledge, knowledge
of sound-symbol associations is vital for success in first grade and
beyond. Accurate and fluent word recognition depends on phonics
knowledge. The ability to read words accounts for a substantial
proportion of overall reading success even in older readers. Good
readers do not depend primarily on context to identify new words.
When good readers encounter an unknown word, they decode the
word, name it, and then attach meaning. The context of the passage
helps a reader get the meaning of a word once a word has been
deciphered.
3. Fluent, automatic reading of text
Beginning readers must apply their decoding skills to fluent,
automatic reading of text. Children who are reading with adequate
fluency are much more likely to comprehend what they are reading.
Thus, the concept of independent reading level is important: it is that
level at which the child recognizes more than 95 percent of the words
and can read without labouring over decoding. Poor readers often read
too slowly. Some poor readers have a specific problem with fluent,
automatic text reading even though they have learned basic phonics.
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4. Vocabulary
Knowledge of word meanings is critical to reading comprehension.
Knowledge of words supports comprehension, and wide reading
enables the acquisition of word knowledge. At school age, children
are expected to learn the meanings of new words at the rate of several
thousand per year. Most of these words are acquired by reading them
in books or hearing them read aloud from books. Networks of words,
tied conceptually, are the foundation of productive vocabulary. Key in
developing this foundation is active processing of word meanings,
which develops understanding of words and their uses, and
connections among word concepts.

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5. Text comprehension
The undisputed purpose of learning to read is to comprehend.
Although children are initially limited in what they can read
independently, comprehension instruction can occur as soon as they
enter school. Comprehension depends, firstly, on a large, working
vocabulary and substantial background knowledge. Even before
children can read for themselves, teachers can build this vital
background knowledge by reading interactively and frequently to
children from a variety of narrative and expository texts, chosen in
part for their ability to expand what children know about the world
around them. Further, comprehension is enhanced when teachers
make sure students understand what they are reading by asking
questions and encouraging student questions and discussions.
Effective instruction will help the reader actively relate his or her own
knowledge or experience to the ideas written in the text, and then
remember the ideas that he or she has come to understand.
6. Written expression
Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. Both depend on
fluent understanding and use of language at many levels. Each
enhances the other. From first grade onward, children benefit from
almost daily opportunities to organize, transcribe, and edit their
thoughts in writing. A variety of writing assignments appropriate to
their abilities is desirable, including production of narratives and
exposition. While they are building the skills of letter formation,
spelling, and sentence generation, children also should be taught to
compose in stages: generating and organizing ideas, initially with a
group or partner; producing a draft; sharing ideas with others for the
purpose of gaining feedback; and revising, editing, proofreading, and
publishing.
7. Spelling and handwriting

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Recent research supports the premise that written composition is
enhanced by mastery of the component skills of spelling and writing
just as reading comprehension is supported by mastery of fluent word
recognition. Fluent, accurate letter formation and spelling are
associated with students’ production of longer and better-organized
compositions. Word usage, handwriting, punctuation, capitalization,
and spelling are the necessary conventions of written expression that
must be taught alongside strategies for composing. Students learn
spelling and handwriting more readily if those skills are taught
explicitly from first grade onward and if they are applied in the
context of frequent, purposeful writing assignments.
8. Screening and continuous assessment to inform instruction
Frequent assessment of developing readers, and the use of that
information for planning instruction, is the most reliable way of
preventing children from falling behind and staying behind. A clear
message from longitudinal studies of reading development is that
most children who become poor readers in third grade and beyond
were having difficulty right from the start with phonologically-based
reading skills. In addition, instruction that targets the specific
weaknesses most likely to cause reading difficulty often prevents later
reading failure and facilitates the reading development of most
children.
9. Motivating children to read and developing their literacy
horizons
As we have emphasized earlier, a successful teacher of beginning
reading generates enthusiasm and appreciation for reading. Research
reviews have repeatedly stated that children who are read to often,
who are led to enjoy books, and who are encouraged to read widely
are more likely to become good readers than children who lack these
experiences. Teachers who are juggling the technical challenges of
program organization and delivery may lose sight of the fact that

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purposeful reading and writing is the goal of instruction. Information
on the importance of daily reading aloud, the selection of varied
reading material, the use of the library, and the integration of topics
across the curriculum will bolster literacy instruction, even as teachers
focus on teaching specific reading and writing skills. Team and school
initiatives to promote a love of books and wide reading should be
ever-present.
READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES
When taught correctly, these reading comprehension strategies are
like tools in a toolkit. Students can use them as needed to build
comprehension.
Even more, these reading comprehension strategies empower readers
because they know the tools, can use the tools, and actively
experience the benefit of using these comprehension tools!

1. Establishing Purpose

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 This is not telling students why they’re reading or asking them to
figure out the author’s purpose for the text. This is helping students
make informed choices about texts and being strategic about how
to attack the text. Helping students set a purpose for reading
purpose also helps them understand the value of tapping into their
prior knowledge.
2. Adjust Fluency
Using decoding skills with such a degree of automaticity that the
reader can adjust as needed to maintain and enhance meaning.
3. Using Context
There are context clues, and there are also other types of context.
Readers use context to make meaning when they consider the
genre, the structure of the paragraph, the graphical features, the text
features, and word context.
4. Background Knowledge
There are many ways to build background knowledge – some are
in your control, some are not:
• Field Trips

• Life Experiences

• Conversations with Adults

• Academic Conversations with Peers

• Video and Media Sources

• Wide Reading Experiences

• Vocabulary Instruction

• Direct Instruction

An active reader actively thinks about prior knowledge to attach

textual meanings to schema.
5. Asking Questions
Great readers constantly ask questions as they read. You can teach
students this and give them examples of the questions good readers
ask. For example, “I wonder why it says…” or “What is (the
character) going to do to (another character) for revision.
6. Self-Monitoring
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 The challenge of reading isn’t merely in the task decoding and
meaning-making. This reading comprehension strategy carries
importance because good readers actively monitor the meaning of
the words they read. When meaning breaks down, they know it and
adjust or self-correct.
7. Making Connections
Background knowledge isn’t enough. Readers must also actively
connect the meaning in the text to their own understandings, their
own experiences, and other texts. These connections beyond the
text enrich their reading comprehension.
8. Inferring
We often think of “inferencing” as the reading skill, but it is a
reading comprehension strategy. The act of inferring is a strategy
that creates comprehension of a text. Inferring includes thinking
such as:
• Making Predictions

• Drawing Conclusions

Using Evidence to Support Origin.

9. Summarizing
A test can ask a student to bubble the “best summary” or write a
summary. But this reading strategy is the ongoing act of pausing
and thinking about the text. What was it about? What was this page
about? What’s happening in this plot?
Summarizing allows a reader to keep track of meaning and adjust
when meaning it.
In 1946, THURSTON reanalysed DAVIS's data and concluded that
DAVIS had no statistical claim for his findings and that only a single
or general factor comprised reading ability. HALL and ROBINSON
in 1945 identified comprehension accuracy, rate of inductive reading,
word meaning, rate for reading unrelated facts and chart reading
skills. Another team identified only two factors-semantic difficulty,
i.e., the difficulty of the sentences, and word difficulty. In 1964,

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another team attempted factor analysis and they found only two skills
that were statistically defensible, i.e., word knowledge and paragraph
comprehension. In 1966, DAVIS did another factorial study using his
original hypothesis.

He found again that five skills were significant. The one that made up
the greater part of the variance was again memory for word meanings.
He found that vocabulary made up 32 percent of what we mean by
reading comprehension. The second factor was drawing inferences 20
percent, i.e., to find out what the author is saying 'between the lines'.
Being able to follow the structure of a passage was 14 percent. Being
able to recognize the writer's purpose, attitude and tone, was 11
percent. Ability to find answers explicit or in factual questions 10
percent. This makes up 87 percent of the total comprehension, the
remaining 13 percent was made up of the other three factors he
studied. Another team, as late as 1969, reported a study of reading
comprehension done in Iowa. This team investigated eight factors as

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possible 'building blocks' in comprehension, but found only four of
these to be actually related to comprehension of reading. They were
(1) speed of reading
(2) ability to listen
(3) ability to classify the words
(4) speed of noting details.
A later study also found vocabulary to be very significant, as was
ability to note rhyming sounds.

There are taxonomic analyses also of reading. A taxonomy is a listing

of all the possible skills that are keen to exist in an orderly category of
presentation. One researcher hypothesized four basic steps to be
present and further reasoned that these four could be broken down
into sub-factors. These four basic factors were-

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1) literal comprehension with 15 sub-factors;
2) ability to re-organize with 13 sub-factors;
3) ability to evaluate with 5 sub-factors; and
4) ability to appreciate literature with 4 sub-factors.
Another area of interest has been in an attempt to define
comprehension as that of building concepts. Words one hears or reads
can help to give objects, dimensions or attributes for classification and
this classification is a part of concept forming. One way of classifying
is by defining a thing in terms of its operation. For example, a
bicycle-it gets people from one place to another. If this is basic to
comprehension, then a person comprehends by being able to classify,
to identify, to recall and to re-order and relate that which he has read.
Teaching for reading comprehension would then include training in
identifying, recording and classifying.
To summarize, one way of defining comprehension is by seeing if
there are certain factors which are analysable as being separate and
discrete by the statistical performance of factorial analysis. Reading
can also be thought of as putting down in logical sequential order all
of the steps which could possibly go in to making up comprehension
or the way in which a person is able to get meaning from the printed
page. This is listing in a taxonomic or in an outline form all of the
steps in order and in sequence. A third way is to think of reading as a
conceptual act or as building concepts. If a concept helps to give each
finite or individual item within our environment a classification, then
with them one is able to build various kinds of organizational
systems. Then if reading is a part of being able to do this, as we learn
to classify from our reading by learning to recall, identify, order and
relate, we have learned to comprehend.
These are some of the ways people have looked at reading.

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What are the implications of these research studies in the writing of
textbooks on reading?
A study of the various workbooks on reading indicates that some
writers write workbooks mostly after their own opinion and with little
attempt to follow of what is known of research. But some writers of
workbooks have relied on research very heavily, although they are in
the minority.
Research on Rate of Reading and Comprehension
The facts from the research on the rate of reading and comprehension
indicates that bright, fast readers do tend to comprehend better than
bright slow readers. That is, brighter, or very intelligent people
comprehend better if they learn to read faster. The duller student
reverses this relationship. The faster he reads the less he
comprehends, for a person who is not very intelligent cannot learn to
read rapidly effectively. But the bright student can learn to read
rapidly effectively. On the other hand, in the contents of mathematics
and science a low negative relationship exists between the rate at
which they are read and the amount comprehend. That is, if one is
going to read something highly complex and technical such as science
or mathematics, then one must read it slowly.
In other words, the more unfamiliar and complex a writing is, the
more slowly it must be read.
Questions and Reading
Research has shown that the more questions that a person is able to
ask relative to what he is reading or learning the higher his
comprehension will be. This, as you know, is a part of our preview-
skimming technique. That we teach previewing and questioning
before reading was included from basic fundamental research which
has shown that the more questions one is able to raise before reading
the higher his comprehension will be.

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To summarize, while research is not inclusive and we do not have a
concluding statement on research in comprehension, we can say
certainly that these studies indicate that vocabulary is important, the
ability to understand the various details in a reading by answering
questions is important, the ability to understand the interferences that
may be picked up in a reading are important, and that the ability to
read flexibly or with a fairly good rate in those kinds of readings
which are relevant to read rapidly are all necessary skills. Being able
to ask questions is also related to comprehension as is being able to
understand the purpose of the writer.
There are a variety of other factors that aid comprehension. Factors
generally considered under 'learning principles' are of great
importance relative to what one learns and remembers from a reading.
First of all, motivation and drive are fundamental, as is also the
amount and nearness of reinforcement. Reinforcement suggests that
the reader gains some tangible good from his reading, and that this
positive effect follows fairly closely the reading act. In other words,
the reader finds reading useful, or it brings pleasure in one way or
another. He is thus reinforced to repeat the activity, in this case
reading for meaning or comprehension.
Learning principles also show that one selects a task for learning that
presents some challenge, that one prefers a goal that is not instantly
achieved but welcomes a certain amount of frustration before the
ultimate satisfaction of achievement. Thus, a reader, if he sees
purpose in it, enjoys learning to read and comprehend at increasingly
more difficult levels. But again, he must feel rewarded for his extra
work, and reinforcement must be clear. The relevance of the reading
must be understood as helping him towards some clearly defined goal,
helping him to perform some tasks, or just because he really enjoys it.
But reading, as a learned act, must be seen as relevant and meaningful
to the reader or he will not come to learn it well.

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