ABSTRACT
Comprehension is the true goal of any encounter with print. In fact, sense-making is the point of print, so it’s critical that we understand some important things about how the ability to comprehend develops. This chapter shows how reading comprehension works. To comprehend a text, enough words on the page have to activate language we already have in our heads. Intuitively, it may seem that children don’t begin the work of reading comprehension until they start learning to read. Reading comprehension actually begins long before children begin to decode. It begins as they learn to understand and use spoken language. Reading comprehension actually involves translating the words on the page into spoken language and “listening to them,” either by saying them aloud or saying them in our heads. In typically developing readers, listening comprehension and reading comprehension eventually become one and the same.
