Chapter 14: Building Awareness of Discourse Structure. Skilled readers are tuned into how information is organized, how central themes emerge, and how signaling mechanisms provide cues to this organization. Skilled readers are able to identify the main or topic sentences as they appear in a text and are sensitive to text structures that help identify where to find main idea sentences. The chapter sorts written discourse analysis into two distinct approaches. The first examined specific aspects of the texts themselves, describing the roles of cohesion, information structuring, lexical signaling, anaphoric signaling, topic continuity signaling, text coherence, text genres, and patterns of discourse organization that underlie all prose texts. The second approach involves a focus on intentional inferencing skills and “deep comprehension.” The chapter then reviews research on discourse structure and reading comprehension in both L1 and L2 contexts. It also focuses specifically on the importance of using discourse sensitive graphic organizers. The chapter then describes research on teaching discourse structure awareness, and concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 16: Reading in Digital Contexts. Digital reading has now become a major form of information communication worldwide. However, discussions around digital reading, specifically in educational contexts, generate many complexities that need to be unpacked. One form of digital reading (and digital texts) involves texts that are essentially equivalent to print texts, but in a digital medium (e.g., e-books, digital journal articles, and emails). Digital reading also refers to online texts on internet browsers and various apps that involve dynamic “online texts.” Research indicates that reading fixed print texts, versus fixed digital texts, leads to better comprehension and better learning, especially with longer texts. At the same time, important distinctions are reported between reading-comprehension skills when reading “frozen” texts and when reading hyperlinked online texts. Reading online texts, while a modern requirement for information seeking, creates many unique difficulties for reading development. Research on these challenges and efforts to provide effective reading instruction with online texts is addressed. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 17: Reading Fluency, Reading Rate, and Comprehension. This chapter reviews research on the role of reading fluency on reading comprehension in both L1 and L2 contexts. Reading fluency is a complex topic in itself, sometimes seen as a component skill contributing to comprehension and sometimes viewed as a reading goal in itself. Reading fluency is defined according to multiple criteria: automaticity, rate, accuracy, and prosodic phrasing. Research on fluency also involves fluent word reading and fluent text passage reading. As research has demonstrated over decades, word reading fluency contributes to early reading development, but text passage reading is a strong predictor of later reading comprehension. This appears to be true in both L1 and L2 contexts. The chapter reviews the major research findings and concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 2: Building Blocks of Fluency and Comprehension. This chapter describes the many component skills and knowledge resources that contribute to reading fluency and reading comprehension. Key component skills addressed include word recognition, orthographic processing, letter-sound correspondences, sight word reading, morphological processing, phonological processing, spelling knowledge and orthographic mapping, syntactic processing, semantic processing, semantic proposition formation, working memory (central executive, phonological loop, episodic buffer), long-term memory, and cognitive executive functions. Other concepts introduced along with component skills include the self-teaching hypothesis, statistical learning, the alphabetic principle, implicit learning, connectionism, lexical access, automaticity, the Lexical Quality Hypothesis, spreading activation, priming effects, word-to-text integration, chunking, meta-linguistic awareness, good-enough parsing, now-or-never processing, chunk-and-pass processing, and usage-based approaches to language learning. The chapter closes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 11: Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension. This chapter highlights the central role that vocabulary knowledge plays in reading comprehension and reading development, for both L1 and L2 learners. The centrality of lexical knowledge for reading is supported now by decades of research across many L1 and L2 settings. In particular, the Lexical Quality Hypothesis, as the central concept of the Reading Systems Framework, is the main support for reading comprehension skills. This central idea applies to both L1 and L2 reading development. A further key idea argues that reading amount is the primary mechanism for the development of lexical quality, and by extension, reading abilities. Learning words in context is a complex notion that is developed in detail. Most important in this regard, is the major impact of incidental word learning from both extensive reading and background knowledge. The chapter closes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 12: Building Main Idea Comprehension: Syntax and Strategies. Identifying main ideas from a text is the fundamental comprehension process that drives how we understand a text and use that information for whatever goals we have set as readers. Identifying main ideas from a text is the fundamental comprehension process that drives how we understand a text and use that information for whatever goals we have set as readers. Critical to main idea comprehension is word-to-text integration processing. This operates automatically through syntactic processing for skilled readers. Comprehension processes are supported through the functional information provided by syntactic resources. However, when texts are difficult or learners need additional support, strategies provide the bridging mechanism in learning to comprehend texts. Strategies that have shown to be effective in research studies are reviewed. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 7: Reading Different Languages. This chapter outlines differences in learning to read in differing L1s. Linguistic differences, or linguistic distance, between any given L1 and L2 will be a factor to consider in L2 reading development. The study of linguistic differences when reading across languages also leads to identifying universal linguistic aspects of reading development. The chapter focuses more specifically on differing orthographic systems, from alphabetic systems to morpho-syllabic systems as well as mixed systems. A major source of variation within alphabetic systems is the concept of orthographic depth between orthography and phonology. English is the most opaque orthographic language and, in that respect, is an outlier among languages of the world. Other factors in word recognition development include the informational density of a given orthography, word reading time, and morphological processing. The many differences across languages also impact L1 to L2 reading transfer. The chapter closes with a discussion of reading universals in relation to L1 to L2 reading transfer and provides a set of implications for instruction.

Chapter 3: Comprehension Processes. This chapter describes higher-level processes and how both lower- and higher-level processes work together to form a mental text representation and a situation model of reading. Key features of higher-level processing include the following: text representation, situation model processing skills associated with working memory, background knowledge, and executive function resources. Key concepts include passive resonance processing, bridging inferences, the now-or-never bottleneck, lexical processing, incremental item-based learning, Kintsch’s Construction-Integration model of reading, a two-level account of reading comprehension, genre variations in text processing, working memory as executive function, other executive functions, attentional processing, inferencing, metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, strategy use, goal setting, and comprehension monitoring. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 6: Explaining Reading Comprehension: Models of Reading. This chapter reviews the major current model of reading comprehension that underlie much of current research on reading comprehension, both in L1 and L2 contexts. The chapter quickly notes more metaphorical explanations and then moves on to models and frameworks that are key for interpreting reading comprehension research: the Simple View of Reading, the Construction-Integration Model, the Landscape Model, the Verbal Efficiency Model, and the Reading Systems Framework Approach. The chapter closes with a specific discussion of L2 reading comprehension as interpreted by current models, and finally with implications for instruction.

Chapter 1: The Nature of Reading. This chapter provides foundations for the entire book in ways not typically discussed on other reading volumes. It begins with a view of literacy worldwide and then develops the concept of “purposes for reading” because reading skills vary in their activations depending on the reading purpose. A taxonomy of types of reading are discussed, but all types carry a core of reading ability more generally. The taxonomy of “purposes” is also validated by a number of specific research studies. The second major concept introduced is a generalized definition of reading ability, which is described in some depth. A third concept introduced is the “standard of coherence” required for reading purpose and task completion, a fourth concept introduced is a current and widely accepted theory of learning with reference to learning to read (ACT learning theory). The chapter closes with the first installment of a consistent features of the book: “Implications for Instruction.”

Chapter 4: Cognitive Issues in Reading. Underlying cognitive skills that support reading include the following: Implicit and explicit learning, frequency of experience with language, automaticity, statistical knowledge and statistical learning, associative learning and emergence (analogy), real-time processing skills (inhibition control, eager processing, predictive processing), speed of processing, the use of background knowledge, conceptualization and categorization, motivation and engagement, and contextual processing. Underlying cognitive skills are the keys to language learning and reading development. Specific concepts addressed include now-or-never processing, chunk-and-pass processing, connectionism, Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN), long-term memory and background knowledge, the several roles of context effects on reading, and semantic priming. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 19: Reading Curriculum and Instruction. This chapter draws together the discussions of many instructional suggestions throughout the many earlier chapters. It first frames instructional recommendations in terms of 16 curricular guidelines to build a coherent yet flexible foundation for reading instruction. The chapter then considers four larger instructional frameworks that are implanted in various ways in both L1 and L2 settings: Discrete reading-skills building approaches, extensive reading approaches, commercial textbook series, and content and language development approaches (Content-Based Reading Instruction). The chapter reviews these four approaches and argues strongly for reading instruction that combines coherent content learning alongside reading skills development. The chapter describes in some detail one L2 content and reading approach (6-Ts). The chapter closes by reviewing the challenges and opportunities in using content-based reading instruction.

Chapter 15: Reading to Learn and Reading-Writing Relationships. This chapter examines research on the close relationship between reading comprehension and writing abilities. The focus of this research has been on how writing can support more advanced reading comprehension, and how engaging students in complex content-based texts and tasks will better prepare students to become both more proficient academic readers and more effective writers. This instructional trend to develop more proficient academic readers and writers is true for both L1 and L2 students, and in both secondary and post-secondary contexts. A third key concept in the reading-writing relationship is the important, but less explored role of content knowledge. The chapter then reviews two specific instructional formats for developing reading-writing relationships: summary writing and synthesis writing. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

Chapter 18: Extensive Reading. Extensive reading (ER) is understood here as an extensive amount of reading. It is not specifically tied only to enjoyable reading or easy reading, although both of these sources of reading are important. The fundamental idea is that a large amount of understandable input (i.e., within students’ linguistic competence) via reading will develop students’ language and knowledge resources through incidental implicit learning. The benefits of extensive reading emerge over time and is fundamental for developing advanced reading abilities. A large amount of reading (extensive reading) leads to better vocabulary knowledge, better background knowledge, and better reading comprehension. Research in both L1 and L2 of contexts are reviewed, and the role of extensive reading (L2) or amount of reading (L1) is the key foundation for reading development and advanced reading comprehension. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

In order for children to become engaged readers, it is important for them to develop the component reading skills that lead to long-term reading success and to find reading enjoyable. Both reading motivation and skill acquisition are central to reading development and continued growth over time. However, the relationship between these two prerequisites for becoming a lifelong reader is dynamic and bidirectional, suggesting that there are many different opportunities to intervene when children are disengaged or struggling readers. School psychologists can play a role in the prevention of and intervention in both reading and motivational challenges. This chapter includes information about how school psychologists might approach these issues using a tiered systems-of-support framework, while taking the home literacy environment into account.