Data from all over the world has consistently shown that students are not reading at grade level. Take the ASER 2018 data, which shows that "of all children enrolled in Std VIII in India, about 73% can read at least a Std II level text" (p. 41). While that's not reassuring at all, it's equally worrisome that we aren't setting our sights higher. Similarly, the NAEP 2017 data shows that a mere 36% of Grade 8 students in the USA "performed at or above Proficient " (p. 3) in reading. These abysmal figures have prompted the growth of reading programmes all over the world, with the use of technology promising treasure troves of data to personalise reading instruction and track reading progress . But what exactly do these programmes personalise? And what exactly do they track? Ask any starry-eyed employee responsible for marketing or selling or training teachers for such a programme, and they'll walk you through scores of levelled texts accompani...
Proposed Definition Reading comprehension is an increasingly automatic process by which readers strive to construct a coherent mental representation of a text by way of extracting literal meaning from printed words and filling in gaps in understanding through inferences that are informed by socio-cultural factors and prior knowledge. Comparison with Other Definitions As per PISA (2003), “Reading literacy is understanding, using and reflecting on written texts, in order to achieve one’s go...