Abstract:

Reading comprehension is highly relevant for learning and teaching processes; it is considered one of the most important skills for academic career progress. Over the last decade, understanding of the nature of children´s difficulties associated to poor comprehension has greatly increased. Several international studies have shown that Spanish-speaking students show a low level of this skill (PIRLS, 2006, 2011) and there is still relatively little knowledge about how children could best overcome a low attainment in reading comprehension. One reason that can explain this situation is the lack of development and implementation of evidence-based practices that promote reading comprehension in the classroom. Thus, until now published programs to foster reading comprehension in Spanish have not been supported by evidence from well-conducted research studies and most intervention studies have evaluated single strategies for intervention.

This paper presents an overview of a recently released Spanish research project focused on evidence-based practice of the improvement of reading comprehension. The project aims to clarify some relevant factors influencing reading comprehension achievement (mainly focusing in oral comprehension, prosody and writing) and to investigate effective evidence-based intervention measures, both for improvement in typically developed children and children with literacy difficulties. Future results will be expected to have substantively impact both at psycho-educational and social levels. The final goal is the design of an integrated intervention program, which is expected to be an effective and useful evidenced-based tool for improving reading comprehension skills. Additionally, it will be expected to serve as answer to what is highly demanded from school and psycho-pedagogical contexts.

Keywords:

Reading Comprehension, Intervention, Evidence-based research, Oral language, Prosody, Writing Skills.