ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the processes that may be especially problematic for the young reader. It provides an overview in which skilled reading is described as the product of both analytic and synthetic, or bottom-up and top-down activities. The chapter focuses on specific problems that might beset beginning readers and the ways in which these might affect their reading comprehension. It describes some of the processes and the ways in which deficiencies in them affect reading comprehension. Some of the most basic aspects of reading may also be the most foreign for the beginner. Indeed, vocabulary is the single best predictor of a child's ability to comprehend written material. In order to comprehend a passage as a whole, readers must be sensitive to the relative importance of its various concepts. Difficulties in comprehending spoken discourse are also much easier to overcome.
