What Does “Reading Comprehension” Really Mean?

By Teaching Generations,

Amy Serven

Why It’s Complex—and Why One Test Can’t Measure It All

“Reading comprehension” is often treated as a single skill—something students either have or don’t have, something that can be measured with one test, one passage, or one score.

But in reality, reading comprehension is the outcome of many interwoven skills, not a single ability. This is exactly what Scarborough’s Reading Rope helps us understand—and why assessing comprehension is far more complex than it’s often made out to be.

Scarborough’s Reading Rope: A Quick Refresher

Scarborough’s Reading Rope shows that skilled reading is made up of two broad strands that become increasingly woven together over time:

🔹 Word Recognition

• Phonological awareness

• Decoding

• Sight recognition / orthographic mapping

🔹 Language Comprehension

• Vocabulary

• Background knowledge

• Language structures (syntax)

• Verbal reasoning

• Literacy knowledge

Reading comprehension happens only when BOTH strands are strong and working together.

A breakdown anywhere along the rope can impact comprehension—even if a student appears “fine” on the surface.

Why One Comprehension Test Isn’t Enough

Many comprehension assessments rely on:

• A single text

• A limited number of question types

• A one-time snapshot

The problem? A student’s score may reflect any number of underlying issues, such as:

• Weak decoding or fluency

• Limited vocabulary or background knowledge

• Difficulty with syntax or sentence structure

• Challenges with attention, stamina, or working memory

A low score doesn’t tell us why comprehension broke down—only that it did.

Different Skills, Different Measures

To understand reading comprehension more accurately, we need to assess different components of the rope, not just the final outcome.

Below are evidence-based ways to assess various aspects of comprehension, and what each one actually tells us.

🔍 Acadience CFOL (Connected Text Oral Reading Fluency)

What it measures:

• Accuracy

• Rate

• Prosody (to some extent)

What it tells us:
CFOL helps answer the question:
➡️ Can the student efficiently decode and read connected text?

Fluency is a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. If a student struggles here, comprehension may break down simply because too much cognitive energy is spent decoding.

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🔍 Maze (Cloze-Style) Assessments

What it measures:

• Basic comprehension

• Word-level meaning

• Sentence-level syntax

• Some inferencing

Maze tasks require students to select words that make sense semantically and syntactically within a passage.

What it tells us: Does the student understand how words and sentences work together in context?

Maze is particularly useful for identifying:

• Vocabulary weaknesses

• Syntax difficulties

• Overreliance on guessing

Limitations:

• Heavily language-dependent

• Can disadvantage students with limited background knowledge

🔍 Retells and Oral/Written Responses

What they measure:

• Understanding of main ideas

• Narrative or informational structure

• Language formulation

What they tell us:
➡️ Can the student construct meaning and express it?

Retells help distinguish between:

• Comprehension breakdowns

• Language expression difficulties

A student may understand a text but struggle to articulate that understanding.

🔍 Vocabulary & Morphology Assessments

What they measure:

• Word meaning

• Understanding of prefixes, suffixes, and roots

Why this matters:
Vocabulary is one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension, especially in upper elementary and middle school.

Students reading morphologically complex words (e.g., misinterpretation, disconnected, unreliable) may decode accurately but still miss meaning.

🔍 Sentence-Level Comprehension & Syntax Tasks

What they measure:

• Understanding of sentence structure

• Clauses, phrases, and relationships between ideas

Many students who “can read the words” struggle with:

• Embedded clauses

• Passive voice

• Complex sentence structures

If students don’t understand sentences, they can’t understand texts.

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Why Assessing Oral Language Comprehension Matters

One of the most informative—and often overlooked—ways to understand a student’s reading comprehension is to remove decoding from the equation entirely.

Oral language comprehension helps answer a key question:

If the text is read aloud to the student, does comprehension improve?

If comprehension increases when decoding is no longer required, this suggests that word recognition—not language comprehension—is the primary barrier. If comprehension remains weak, the breakdown is likely within the language comprehension strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope.

What Oral Language Comprehension Can Reveal

Assessing oral language comprehension provides insight into:

• Vocabulary knowledge

• Syntax and sentence understanding

• Verbal reasoning

• Inferencing and synthesis

• Listening comprehension and working memory

These skills are foundational for reading comprehension and often develop before or alongside print-based reading skills.

Practical Ways to Assess Oral Language Comprehension

• Read a short passage aloud and ask comprehension questions

• Have students retell what they heard

• Ask inference or “why” questions orally

• Use discussion prompts instead of written responses

Comparing oral comprehension to silent reading comprehension helps teachers pinpoint whether a student’s difficulties stem from decoding demands or from language processing itself.

Why This Matters Instructionally

When oral language comprehension is strong but reading comprehension is weak, instruction should prioritize:

• Decoding accuracy

• Fluency

• Automatic word recognition

When oral language comprehension is also weak, students need explicit instruction in:

• Vocabulary

• Syntax

• Verbal reasoning

• Structured discussion and language practice

Without assessing oral language comprehension, we risk misidentifying the source of reading difficulty—and missing the instruction students truly need.

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When Decoding, Vocabulary, and Background Knowledge Are Not the Problem

One of the most confusing situations for teachers is this:

A student can decode accurately.
They know the vocabulary.
They have background knowledge on the topic.
And yet… comprehension still falls apart.

This is where verbal reasoning and higher-order language skills come into play—skills that sit squarely within the language comprehension strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope.

Reading comprehension is not just about understanding words. It’s about thinking with language.

Verbal Reasoning: The Hidden Driver of Comprehension

Verbal reasoning includes a student’s ability to:

• Make inferences

• Understand cause and effect

• Evaluate information

• Synthesize ideas across sentences or texts

• Recognize an author’s intent or perspective

These skills are not easily captured by traditional comprehension tests—but they are essential for true understanding.

Evidence-Based Ways to Assess Higher-Level Comprehension Skills

🔍 1. Inference-Focused Questioning (Oral or Written)

What it assesses:

• Inferencing

• Integration of text information

• Reasoning beyond literal meaning

How to assess:

• Ask “How do you know?” questions

• Use questions that require students to combine two or more pieces of information from the text

• Have students cite a sentence or phrase that supports their thinking

Why it matters:
Inference requires students to hold information in working memory, integrate it, and reason with language—not just recall facts.

🔍 2. Sentence-Level and Paragraph-Level Synthesis Tasks

What it assesses:

• Synthesis

• Understanding of relationships between ideas

• Logical sequencing

Examples:

• “Explain how these two sentences connect.”

• “Summarize this paragraph in one sentence.”

• “What idea ties these details together?”

Students who struggle here may understand individual sentences but fail to combine meaning across text.

🔍 3. Verbal Reasoning Prompts (Think-Alouds & Oral Responses)

What it assesses:

• Depth of understanding

• Reasoning processes

• Language formulation

How to use it:

• Ask students to explain their thinking aloud

• Prompt with:

  • “Why do you think…?”

  • “What makes this important?”

  • “What would happen if…?”

Oral reasoning removes the writing barrier and allows teachers to hear how students are processing language in real time.

🔍 4. Evaluative and Critical Thinking Tasks

What it assesses:

• Evaluation

• Perspective-taking

• Judgment based on evidence

Examples:

• “Do you agree with the author? Why or why not?”

• “Which detail best supports the author’s claim?”

• “What information is missing or unclear?”

These tasks reveal whether students can analyze and judge information, not just understand it.

🔍 5. Text Comparison and Synthesis Across Texts

What it assesses:

• Synthesis

• Conceptual understanding

• Transfer of knowledge

Examples:

• Compare two short texts on the same topic

• Ask students to identify:

  • Similar ideas

  • Conflicting information

  • Different perspectives

Even brief comparison tasks can uncover deep reasoning gaps that single-text comprehension questions miss.

🔍 6. Language Structure and Syntax-Based Tasks

What it assesses:

• Understanding of complex sentence structures

• Logical relationships between ideas

Examples:

• Paraphrase a complex sentence

• Identify cause/effect or contrast within a sentence

• Rewrite a sentence using a connector (because, although, therefore)

Students may know the words but not the relationships encoded in syntax.

Building These Skills Instructionally (Not Just Assessing Them)

To strengthen higher-level comprehension, instruction should include:

• Explicit teaching of connectors and conjunctions

• Structured discussion with sentence frames

• Frequent opportunities to explain thinking verbally

• Short, focused synthesis and evaluation tasks

• Sentence-level work before text-level work

These skills must be taught—they do not reliably develop through exposure alone.

Putting It All Together: A More Accurate Picture

Instead of asking:
❌ “Can this student comprehend?”

We should ask:
✅ Which strands of the reading rope are strong—and which need support?

True comprehension assessment requires:

• Multiple measures

• Multiple text types

• Multiple levels (word, sentence, text)

No single test can capture the complexity of reading.

What This Means for Instruction

When we understand comprehension as a woven outcome, instruction becomes clearer:

• Strengthen decoding and fluency

• Explicitly teach morphology and vocabulary

• Build background knowledge

• Teach syntax and sentence structure

• Support verbal reasoning and discussion

Comprehension doesn’t improve with more questions—it improves when we strengthen the strands that support it.