ABSTRACT
This chapter explores two issues: whether there are distinct reading comprehension skills and whether there is evidence of a skill hierarchy. Across several sources, there is consensus that reading comprehension entails about seven skills—recognizing sequence, recognizing words in context, identifying the main idea, decoding detail, drawing inferences, recognizing cause and effect, and comparing and contrasting. Studies by Holmes and Singer were attempts to identify the "substrata factors," speed of reading, and reading comprehension. The publishers' scope and sequence charts for the first three semesters of five primary grade reading curricula were inspected to determine whether comprehension skills are presented in either a sequential or hierarchical manner. In comparing skills across programs, other reviewers might make slightly different groupings—particularly of those skills enclosed by brackets—but the general similarities across programs seem fairly clear. However, if one also includes the unique skills and subskills that have been mentioned, then the total number of possible reading skills is in the hundreds.
