Comprehension research suggests there are three main areas in which children need to develop in order to improve comprehension: developing background knowledge, vocabulary and inferencing skills.
Of these three skills, studies have concluded that “vocabulary is consistently the strongest predictor of reading comprehension for younger adolescents”. As students get older (around their mid to late teens), inference-making plays a stronger role in comprehension than vocabulary, although vocabulary remains important.
This makes sense – children can’t begin to form inferences if they haven’t understood several of the words within the passage.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the U.S. has also confirmed that “students who scored higher in vocabulary questions also scored higher in reading comprehension”. They found this to be the case in the 4th, 8th and 12th grades.
The number of words that a child needs to learn depends on the level of the comprehension text, however, studies have generally concluded that a student needs to understand 98% of the words in a passage in order to comprehend it. When children are familiar with only 90% of the words in a passage, the vast majority (over 80%) were unable to achieve a good comprehension standard.
Given the level of vocabulary needed to understand a text, it’s safe to assume that the broader a child’s vocabulary is, the better chance they will have of improving their comprehension.
If your child is sitting the Eleven Plus (11+) – the British exam that children sit in order to secure entry to a grammar school – their vocabulary will undoubtedly be tested as part of the exam.
Most 11+ exams contain a comprehension component whilst others explicitly test knowledge of synonyms, antonyms and cloze tests (where children are asked to complete sentences with the most appropriate word). Even exams that exclude comprehension in favour of verbal reasoning will have a significant number of vocabulary-based questions.
Eleven Plus parents are often concerned about their child’s comprehension skills, especially when the parents are non-native English speakers. In contrast to maths or reasoning skills, where children can make significant gains in a fairly short period of time, studies are clear on the fact that comprehension skills need to be worked on consistently over a prolonged period.
Often, there isn’t a quick fix when it comes to developing inferencing skills or even background knowledge. As vocabulary has the most direct link to comprehension in younger students, it is logical to make a concerted effort to improve this during 11+ preparation. Not only will this aid comprehension but it will have a significant impact on verbal reasoning skills, too. Together, these skills often make up fifty per cent of a child’s 11+ score.
It is essential to work on vocabulary in a systematic way, however. A scattergun approach will leave your child unable to remember what they’ve learnt, whilst rote learning will make it difficult for your child to understand the word in context or to use it in a sentence on their own. To make the greatest gains in vocabulary, it is therefore vital to review new words regularly and explore how they can be used in context.
Wordier helps children to improve their vocabulary with no fuss and in record time. View our full range of resources here.
