An Analysis of the Reading Strategies Used by Adult and Student Deaf Readers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify and examine effective reading strategies used by adult deaf readers compared with student deaf readers. There were a total of 11 participants: 5 deaf adults ranging from 27 to 36 years and 6 deaf students ranging from 16 to 20 years. Assessment methods included interview and think-aloud procedures in which individuals were interrupted 3 times during the reading of a text to answer questions about their internal cognitive processes. It was found that both student and adult groups had highly skilled readers who demonstrated higher level reading strategies and less skilled readers who demonstrated lower level strategies, and only the highest skilled reader demonstrated both breadth and depth of strategies in all three categories: “constructing meaning,” “monitoring and improving comprehension,” and “evaluating comprehension.” The study contributes evidence toward two identified gaps in the existing body of research: (a) the lack of investigation into the reading strategies utilized by deaf readers in text comprehension and (b) the overemphasis of most research on studying less skilled deaf readers while overlooking highly proficient deaf readers.

Reading is a complex process. It involves the active construction of meaning from text, using linguistic knowledge and the decoding of letters and words, as well as higher order processes, such as metacognitive strategies (Brown & Brewer, 1996). Metacognition is commonly described as “thinking about thinking.” In regard to reading, if cognition is the process of constructing meaning from text, then metacognition involves readers’ awareness of their own cognitive processes, including recognition of comprehension breakdowns and the knowledge and ability to choose alternate strategies when comprehension fails (Martin, 1991). There are four components of metacognition: (a) knowing when you comprehend, (b) knowing what you comprehend, (c) knowing what knowledge you need to acquire in order to comprehend, and (d) knowing how to invoke strategies to improve comprehension (Schirmer & McGough, 2005).

The findings of the National Reading Panel (2000) and the review of research on good readers’ comprehension habits (Duke & Pearson, 2003) suggest that good readers are “purposeful” and “active.” Prior to reading, good readers activate prior knowledge while they routinely skim through text looking for information relevant to their reading goals. As they read, good readers constantly evaluate whether their goals are being met, frequently formulate predictions, and read selectively. While they read, good readers also keep the information regarding authors of the text in mind, such as their style, historical background, beliefs, and intentions. Overall, good readers find reading satisfying and productive (Trezek, Wang, & Paul, 2010).

Metacognition plays a critical role in maximizing reading comprehension and often marks the difference between active and passive readers. Skilled readers monitor their own reading process to maintain awareness and control over their understanding of a text through the use of various metacognitive strategies. In the event of a breakdown in comprehension, skilled readers can identify gaps in understanding, determine whether or not the unknown information is critical to their overall understanding, and activate effective repair strategies to decipher an approximation of an item’s meaning in order to maintain a cohesive understanding of the text. In contrast, for many less skilled readers, an unknown word or concept could lead to an irreparable breakdown in the overall comprehension of a text (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001). Numerous research studies on hearing children have identified a strong positive correlation between metacognitive skill and reading comprehension ability, indicating that good readers possess metacognitive awareness, enabling them to adjust their reading strategies, whereas poor readers do not (National Reading Panel, 2000). However, there are sparse research studies providing a comprehensive picture of the deaf reader’s use of metacognitive strategies and its role in comprehension (Schirmer, 2003; Trezek et al., 2010).

A bulk of the research on metacognition and reading has compared deaf readers with hearing readers. Some research reported that deaf readers utilized similar equally effective cognitive strategies as their hearing counterparts (Brown & Brewer, 1996; Gibbs, 1989), whereas other research concluded that deaf readers demonstrated significant deficits compared with hearing readers in the quantity and quality of reading strategies used (Andrews & Mason, 1991; Davey, 1987; Marschark, Lang, & Albertini, 2002; Moores & Martin, 2006; Schirmer, 2003; Strassman, 1997). Both Ewoldt (1986) and Strassman (1992) directly interviewed deaf or hard-of-hearing students and found that they did not use comprehension-monitoring strategies extensively. The most commonly cited explanation for challenges implementing metacognitive regulative strategies is that deaf readers continue to struggle with lower level text-based skills, such as word recognition and vocabulary comprehension, and therefore do not develop higher level independent strategies, such as self-questioning, activating prior knowledge, inferring, predicting, and monitoring for misunderstanding (Andrews & Mason, 1991; Strassman, 1997).

Brown and Brewer (1996) suggested that reading skills be used as the independent variable in a study of all deaf participants, instead of the typical comparison of deaf and hearing readers. Amidst the research focusing on deaf students who lack proficiency in English, Toscano, McKee, and Lepoutre (2002) selected a group of deaf students who demonstrated high proficiency in English literacy in an attempt to investigate the correlating factors that contributed to their success. Through student interviews, they found that the most significant factors for success in literacy, regardless of communication modality, were early and extensive communication with family and early exposure to reading and writing. Deaf readers may have variations in prior knowledge based on sensory and linguistic differences and potential deficits in both early communication experiences and incidental-learning opportunities.

The tendency of many studies on this topic has been to investigate “deficiencies” rather than identifying and examining successful strategies used by deaf individuals. Further research on metacognitive monitoring in proficient deaf readers is needed to help determine the factors leading to their success (Strassman, 1997). For a more comprehensive understanding, it is important to examine both the successful strategies of deaf readers who have automatized lower level processing skills and are highly proficient at higher level metacognitive skills and the potential causes for the lack of metacognitive strategies used among less skilled deaf readers.

This investigation was guided by the following research question: What are the reading strategies used by adult and student deaf readers? The purpose of this study was to conduct an analysis of the reading strategies used by adult and student deaf readers in order to identify effective and accessible reading strategies for deaf readers. If deaf individuals bring a unique cultural, experiential, and linguistic perspective to the task of reading, these differences will most likely influence their metacognitive responses to text. Rather than measuring deaf readers against a control group of hearing models, who have significant differences in literacy background and experience, we comparatively measured only deaf readers, with variations in skill levels and developmental stages.

The findings of this study will contribute evidence toward two identified gaps in the existing body of research on deaf children and reading: (a) the lack of investigative research into the reading strategies utilized by deaf readers for the purpose of text comprehension and (b) the overemphasis of most research on studying less skilled deaf readers while overlooking highly proficient deaf readers.

Method

Participants and Settings in General

There were a total of 11 participants involved in this research study (see Table 1). Participants were divided into two groups—an adult group and a student group. The adult group consisted of five deaf adults ranging from 27 to 36 years and the student group consisted of six deaf students ranging from 16 to 20 years. The deaf adults were recruited individually through affiliations with the local Deaf community mainly by word of mouth. The inclusion criteria were (adapted from Miller, 2002) (a) profound hearing loss: unaided pure-tone average of at least 85dB; (b) prelingual deafness: onset of hearing loss prior to age 2, before acquiring and internalizing a spoken code; and (c) no diagnosed physical or learning disability that might interfere with task completion. All participants signed the “consent form” approved by the Local Institutional Review Board. The adult group represented a range of reading strategies and levels of education, three out of the five participants were attending a graduate institution at the time of this study, one of whom was also a doctoral candidate; one participant was a college graduate; and one participant left high school during her junior year and did not graduate. All the student participants were attending a high school for the deaf in a metropolitan area in the Northeastern United States. Based on a similar inclusion criteria as the adult participants, the students were recommended for participation by their teacher and were representative of a variety of reading levels, ranging from a second to a seventh grade equivalency in reading. “Parent/guardian consent forms” were sent home explaining the project and informing the parents/guardians that the students could opt out of the project at any time without any penalty. All Parent/guardian consent forms were signed. All the student participants had a similar family background (i.e., being the only deaf member of the family) and educational history (i.e., attending a school for the deaf using the simultaneous use of spoken English and signs to manually represent English, known as Simultaneous Communication, since preschool or kindergarten) unless otherwise specified in the following section. Each adult and student participant was assigned a pseudonym during data collection and analysis to assure confidentiality. All the participants were involved in the project voluntarily, and no one was compensated.

Table 1

Summary of demographic information and reading level of assigned material for all participants (N = 11)

Names	Gender	Age, years	Educational status	Reading level of assigned material
Mark	M	27	Masters student	(1) 9.7 (2) 6.4 (3) 12.0
Jessica	F	30	Masters student	(1) 9.7 (2) 6.4 (3) 12.0
Sara	F	36	Doctoral candidate	(1) 9.7 (2) 6.4 (3) 12.0
Maria	F	27	High school dropout	(1) 9.7 (2) 6.4 (3) 12.0
Natalie	F	30	College graduate	(1) 9.7 (2) 6.4 (3) 12.0
Tony	M	16	10th grade	7th grade reading level
Tamara	F	17	11th grade	4th grade reading level
Mario	M	16	10th grade	7th grade reading level
Lisa	F	17	10th grade	3rd grade reading level
Amy	F	16	11th grade	5th grade reading level
Carlos	M	20	12th grade	2nd grade reading level

Note. All adult participants were given the same three passages to read: (1) a narrative text (an excerpt from a novel), (2) a periodical (an article from Newsweek), and (3) an expository text (a journal article about legal proceedings). The reading levels for the adult texts were calculated based on the Flesch–Kincaid reading grade level. Each student participant was given a reading passage that matched his or her most recent reading grade equivalency score.

Adult Participants

Mark.

At the time of the study, Mark was a 27-year-old graduate student. He is the only deaf member of his family and believes to have been deaf since birth. Mark’s elementary school followed the oral approach; therefore, all instruction was in spoken language. Around age 12, Mark began learning sign language, and in high school, he was taught either American Sign Language (ASL) or Simultaneous Communication. Today, Mark prefers ASL but considers English to be his first language.

Jessica.

Jessica was a 30-year-old graduate student who has been deaf since 11 months old and is the only deaf person in her family. Jessica was mainstreamed for elementary and high school, with the use of a sign language interpreter and attended college. Jessica considers English to be her first language but prefers to use ASL, which she learned around the age of 6.

Sara.

Sara was a 36-year-old doctoral candidate at a graduate institution at the time of this study. While Sara is the only deaf member of her family, they all began learning sign language together from when she was 2 years old. Sara considers both English and ASL to be her first languages. Sara’s elementary school for the deaf used Simultaneous Communication. The public school she transferred to in middle school instructed in spoken English, for which Sara did not have a sign language interpreter until high school.

Maria.

Maria was a 27-year-old woman who was born deaf into a hearing family with one deaf older sister. Growing up, Maria’s communication with her parents and brother was limited to confusing home signs and gestures. Without full communication, numerous incidental-learning opportunities were not accessible to Maria. In kindergarten, Maria began learning her first and preferred language, ASL. Maria’s educational experience consisted of a deaf program that used Simultaneous Communication and being mainstreamed with a sign language interpreter. Maria left high school during her junior year and never graduated.

Natalie.

Natalie was a 30-year-old college graduate who was born deaf to hearing parents. Three of her siblings are also deaf. Natalie’s mother uses simultaneous sign language and speech and her father uses speech with some home signs and gestures. Natalie’s elementary school used a mixture of sign language and speech. In sixth grade, she transferred to an oral school at which no sign language was used and where Natalie described missing a lot of the communication. When Natalie was in eighth grade, her school began to incorporate sign language into their instruction.

Student Participants

Tony.

Tony was a 16 year-old student in the tenth grade at the time of this study. Tony and one older brother were born deaf into a hearing family. Tony was given a seventh grade level reading passage to match his latest reading grade equivalency score.

Tamara.

Tamara was a 17-year-old student in the 11th grade. Tamara was given a passage at a fourth grade level to match her latest reading grade equivalency score.

Mario.

Mario was a 16-year-old sophomore in high school. Mario was given a seventh grade level passage to match his most recent reading grade equivalency score.

Lisa.

Lisa was a 17-year-old sophomore in high school. Lisa was born deaf and learned to read around the age of 5 by reading and signing at the same time and looking at pictures for contextual support. Lisa was given a third grade level text to match her most recent reading grade equivalency score.

Amy.

Amy was a 16-year-old junior in high school. Amy was given a passage at a fifth grade reading level to match her most recent reading grade equivalency score.

Carlos.

Carlos was a 20-year-old senior in high school. Carlos was born deaf in a Spanish-speaking country before moving to the United States at the age of 14. Carlos began learning Spanish; but before achieving proficiency, he moved to America and began learning English. Carlos was given a second grade level text to match his reading grade equivalency score.

Procedure

Both interview and think-aloud procedures were used in the study in an attempt to elicit the most responses regarding underlying cognitive strategies used during reading. All participants were assessed/interviewed individually by the first author. Sessions were conducted in ASL and videotaped to allow for later transcription and analysis. Sessions began with an interview to gather background information, obtain the perspectives of participants as readers, and build rapport between participants and the interviewer in an effort to increase their comfort level, thereby enhancing the openness of their responses during the think-aloud assessment.

Interview.

The interview consisted of general background questions, regarding onset of deafness, educational background, language experience, and communication with family. Because the student participants were coming from a relatively homogeneous background in regard to hearing status of their family and educational history, this section of the interview was shorter for the student participants than for the adult participants. The second portion of the interview consisted of questions related to reading background, such as how and when participants learned to read, how they view themselves as readers, and what strategies they use while reading. Adult interviews were longer and more comprehensive than student interviews due to time and procedural limitations (see the interview questions in Table 2). Not all the participants were able to answer all the interview questions. Only the available answers were reported in the Results and Discussion section.

Table 2

Interview questions for participants

	Questions for adult participants
Demographic: Background	How old are you?
	How old were you when you first became deaf?
	Are any of your parents/siblings/family members deaf?
	What is your level of hearing?
	What type of elementary and high school did you attend (mainstream, public, school for the Deaf, other)?
	What language modality was used in your school (ASL, English, Signed English, Simultaneous Communication involving signs and speech, other)?
	What is your level of schooling (high school, college, masters, PhD)?
	What do you consider to be your first language (ASL, English, other)?
	What is your preferred language of expression and reception?
	Do any of your family members know sign language? How fluent are they?
Reading: Background	When did you first begin reading? What is your earliest memory related to reading?
	How did you learn to read?
	How do you see yourself as a reader? Do you feel you are a good reader? Why or why not?
	What do you think about when you are reading? [Do you think in sign language, pictures, do you hear your voice?]
	What reading strategies do you use when you are reading?
	When you are reading and you come to something you do not know, what reading strategies do you use to try to figure it out?
	Questions for student participants
Demographic and reading: Background	How old are you?
	What grade are you in?
	Were you born deaf or became deaf later? If so, how old were you?
	How old were you when you read your first book?
	How did you learn to read?
	Do you feel you are a good reader, ok reader, struggling reader? Why? Why not?
	When you are reading, what do you think about?
	When you are reading and you do not understand something, what do you do to try and figure out what it means?

Note. Adapted from Toscano and colleagues (2002).

Think-aloud.

The think-aloud portion of this study differed in length and complexity between the adult and student participants. All adult participants were given the same three passages to read. The passages were one to two pages in length and varied in difficulty level, topic, and genre. The three texts included a narrative text (an excerpt from a novel), a periodical (an article from Newsweek), and an expository text (a journal article about legal proceedings). The reading levels were calculated based on the Flesch–Kincaid reading grade level, which uses a number corresponding with a grade level. For example, the Flesch–Kincaid grade level for the narrative text is 9.7, which meant that the text is expected to be understandable by an average student in ninth grade. Student participants were given one passage, one to two pages in length, matching their individual reading levels based on their latest reading grade equivalency score. All passages were retyped, removing any additional contextual clues such as pictures and titles, in an attempt to encourage participants to rely strictly on the text from which to construct meaning.

For the think-aloud tasks, participants were instructed to read passages at their own pace, as many times as they wanted, and in their preferred modality (signed, spoken, or silently to themselves). During the sessions, participants were not given any additional information on the passages and any vocabulary or comprehension miscues were probed, but not corrected. For example, one of the think-aloud question was “Were there any words or parts of the story that were confusing to you? If yes, can you show me the word or describe the part? What did you do to try to figure it out?” If the participant did not self-identify unknown words, the interviewer would select word(s) and ask for their meaning(s) and how the participant deciphered it. Sessions ranged in length from 30 min to 2 hrs.

Think-aloud questions were semi-structured. Each passage was divided into three sections, and the end of each section was marked with a symbol. When participants arrived at the symbol, their reading process was interrupted and they were instructed to look up as the interviewer proceeded to ask them think-aloud questions. While questions were designed to be open-ended, if a participant was not responding, the interviewer would provide some scaffolding with examples to try to encourage a clear understanding of the question and maximize the responses.

Think-aloud questions were intended to address different aspects of cognitive processes during reading. The first question, “Explain what you were just thinking while reading this part,” was an attempt to attain immediacy by extracting the participant’s most recent thought processes and also to divulge the language modality of participants’ inner thought processes, such as inner speech, sign language, and/or use of mental imagery. The question, “What did this story make you think of?” addresses the activation of prior knowledge and personal experience. In an attempt to identify an awareness of comprehension breakdowns and engagement of metacognitive repair strategies, the interviewer asked, “Were there any words or parts of the story that were confusing to you? What did you do to try to figure it out?” At the end of a passage, the interviewer also assessed comprehension by asking participants to summarize the text; make a prediction; and identify key elements, including the main character, theme, and the author’s intention. If the interviewer was unclear of how participants arrived at an answer, the interviewer asked, “How do you know?” and had them identify evidence to support their answer.

After all the sessions were completed, the videotapes of each participant were transcribed by translating participants’ responses from ASL into written English by the first author, who was an experienced certified ASL interpreter and a master’s student in an Education for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing graduate program at the time of the study.

Analysis

After completing the transcriptions, an in-depth analysis was conducted for each participant’s responses and the reading strategies used by each participant were documented on a reading strategies checklist. The checklist was based on Pressley and Afflerbach (1995), Schirmer (2003), and Paul (2001) but specifically designed to reflect the range of strategies used by participants in this study. For example, “translating text into sign language” and “substituting familiar signs for unfamiliar words/phrases” were strategies reported by the participants in this study and therefore added to the checklist (see Tables 3 and 4).

Table 3

Reading strategies checklist for adult participants (n = 5)

Strategies	Mark	Jessica	Sara	Maria	Natalie
Constructing meaning
Rereading
Skimming text to find specific information	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(2)	(1,2,3)
Reading and/or signing text word for word	(1,2,3)	(3)	(1,2)	(1,2)	(1,2,3)
Activating prior knowledge
Passage-specific: story structure, genre, or writing style	(2,3)	(1,3)	(3)	(1)	(1,2,3)
Topic-specific: background about a particular topic	(1,3)	(1,2)	(1,2,3)		(1,2,3)
Relating to personal experience	(1)		(1,2)	(1,3)	(1,3)
Constructing analogy or association	(1)		(2)	(1,3)
Predicting
Predicting based on contextual clues	(1,2,3)	(1,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,3)
Predicting based on prior knowledge	(1,2,3)	(3)	(1,2,3)	(2)	(1,3)
Constructing alternative predictions simultaneously	(2)		(1)
Confirming or revising one’s prediction	(1,2)	(1)	(1,3)
Constructing and reconstructing
Noting relationships between parts of text		(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1)	(1,2,3)
Reorganizing story structure		(1,2,3)
Distinguishing important from less important information	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2)		(1)
Visualizing/use of mental imagery	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2)
Replacing or modifying mental imagery	(2)	(1)	(1)	(1)	(1)
Identifying the main idea	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)
Modifying the main idea		(1,2)	(1,2,3)	(2,3)	(2,3)
Generating internal graphic and/or semantic organizers	(3)		(3)		(3)
Constructing alternative meanings for words/concepts	(1,2)		(1)		(2)
Empathizing with characters (imagining self in the story)	(1)	(1,2)	(1,2)	(1,3)	(1,2,3)
Translating text into sign language	(1,2,3)	(1)	(1)	(1,2,3)
Substituting familiar for unfamiliar signs/words/phrases	(1)			(2)
Eliminating information to simplify text	(1,2,3)	(2)			(2)
Summarizing or paraphrasing parts of text	(1,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,3)
Inferring
Inferring meanings of words/phrases based on context	(1,2)	(1,3)	(1,2)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)
Constructing explanations from context/prior knowledge	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)	(1,2)	(1,2,3)
Constructing alternative inferences simultaneously	(1)		(1)		(2)
Confirming/revising inferences based on info in text	(1,2,3)	(1,3)	(1)		(1,2)
Inferring character’s feelings/intentions/assumptions	(1,2)	(1,2)	(1,2)	(1,2,3)	(1,2,3)
Inferring author’s intentions/assumptions/beliefs	(2)		(1,2,3)		(2,3)
Generating elaborations (events/thoughts/feelings/details)	(1,2)	(1)	(1,2,3)	(1,2)	(1,2,3)
Monitoring and improving comprehension
Monitoring processing of text
Deciding what to skim or skip and what to read carefully	(1,2,3)	(2)	(1,2)		(1,2)
Identifying words/concepts one does or does not understand	(1,2)	(1,2,3)	(1,2)	(1)	(1,2)
Recognizing source of comprehension problems	(1)		(1,2)		(2)
Repairing comprehension breakdowns
Evaluating breakdown within overall understanding	(1,2)		(1)	(1)	(2)
Generating questions re: words/concepts	(1,2)	(1,2)	(1,2,3)	(3)	(1,2,3)
Seeking answers in context to self-generated questions	(1,2,3)		(1,2)		(2)
Summing up to figure out contextual information			(2)
Developing alternative word meanings/interpretations	(1,2)		(1)		(1,2)
Reading further and holding off on making conclusions	(2,3)	(2,3)	(1,2)	(1)	(2)
Carefully analyzing information presented in text	(1)		(1,2,3)		(2)
Thinking of an analogy/association to clarify			(1,2)	(1)	(1,3)
Evaluating comprehension
Judgment of quality of writing: is it good or bad?	(1)		(1,2)
Awareness of author’s bias			(2,3)
Approval/disapproval of the content of text			(2,3)
Approval/disapproval of characters/places/circumstances			(2)
Overt affective reactions to text		(2)	(2,3)

Note.(1, 2, or 3) = during which passage(s) did the participant demonstrate that reading strategy: Passage 1 = narrative text; Passage 2 = periodical; Passage 3 = expository text.

Table 4

Reading strategies checklist for student participants (n = 6)

Strategies	Tony	Tamara	Mario	Lisa	Amy	Carlos
Constructing meaning
Rereading
Skimming text to find specific information	Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes
Reading and/or signing text word for word	Yes		Yes		Yes	Yes
Activating prior knowledge
Passage-specific: story structure, genre, or writing style	Yes
Topic-specific: background about a particular topic	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes
Relating to personal experience	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes
Constructing analogy or association
Predicting
Predicting based on contextual clues	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Predicting based on prior knowledge	Yes	Yes			Yes	Yes
Constructing alternative predictions simultaneously				Yes
Confirming or revising one’s prediction	Yes	Yes
Constructing and reconstructing
Noting relationships between parts of text
Reorganizing story structure			Yes	Yes
Distinguishing important from less important information
Visualizing/use of mental imagery	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Replacing or modifying mental imagery	Yes
Identifying the main idea	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes
Modifying the main idea	Yes					Yes
Generating internal graphic and/or semantic organizers
Constructing alternative meanings for words/concepts	Yes		Yes			Yes
Empathizing with characters (imagining self in the story)	Yes		Yes	Yes
Translating text into sign language	Yes		Yes	Yes		Yes
Substituting familiar for unfamiliar signs/words/phrases	Yes		Yes			Yes
Eliminating information to simplify text				Yes
Summarizing or paraphrasing parts of text	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Inferring
Inferring meanings of words/phrases based on contexts	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes
Constructing explanations from context/prior knowledge	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Constructing alternative inferences simultaneously	Yes
Confirming/revising inferences based on info in text	Yes				Yes	Yes
Inferring character’s feelings/intentions/assumptions	Yes	Yes		Yes		Yes
Inferring author’s intentions/assumptions/beliefs
Generating elaboration (events/thoughts/feelings/details)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes
Monitoring and improving comprehension
Monitoring processing of text
Deciding what to skim or skip and what to read carefully	Yes
Identifying words/concepts one does or does not understand	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes
Recognizing source of comprehension problems	Yes	Yes
Repairing comprehension breakdowns
Evaluating breakdown within overall understanding
Generating questions re: words/concepts	Yes		Yes		Yes
Seeking answers in context to self-generated questions					Yes
Summing up to figure out contextual information
Developing alternative word meanings/interpretations	Yes				Yes
Reading further and holding off on making conclusions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Carefully analyzing information presented in text	Yes
Thinking of an analogy/association to clarify
Evaluating comprehension
Judgment of quality of writing: is it good or bad?
Awareness of author’s bias
Approval/disapproval of the content of text
Approval/disapproval of characters/places/circumstances
Overt affective reactions to text

During analysis, the reading strategies were organized into three categories: “constructing meaning,” “monitoring and improving comprehension,” and “evaluating comprehension.” The first category of constructing meaning refers to the construction of meaning from text and includes five subcategories: rereading, activating prior knowledge, predicting, constructing and reconstructing, and inferring. The second category of monitoring and improving comprehension refers to monitoring and repairing comprehension and includes two subcategories of monitoring the processing of text and repairing breakdowns in comprehension. Within each subcategory is a list of specific reading strategies. The reading strategies exhibited for the third category of evaluating comprehension included judgment of the quality of writing, awareness of the author’s bias, approval/disapproval of the content of the text, approval/disapproval of the characters/places/circumstances, and overt affective reactions to the text.

All the data were coded by the two authors individually based on the reading strategies checklist, and the interrater reliability was 100%. In the final step of our analysis, we surveyed all the data to compare the quantity and quality of strategies used by participants and to identify themes, patterns, and variations within the results.

Results and Discussion

Adult Reading Strategies

Mark.

Mark’s exposure to reading began in the first grade, but he admittedly never enjoyed it until discovering comic books in middle school, which had pictures to support the text. College was the turning point when Mark began reading for understanding and gained a better grasp of the complex uses of language previously frustrating to him, such as metaphors, English idioms, sarcasm, and multiple meaning words. Mark referred to such phrases as “hearing quotes” and has learned to recognize them and avoid making literal interpretations, whereas he continues to expand his prior knowledge with their meanings.

The comprehension strategies Mark reported using during the interview when reading an unknown word or phrase were consulting a dictionary, rereading, asking an expert on the topic, looking on the Internet, using prior knowledge, creating alternative sentences that are equivalent in meaning, and trying to recall and make connections with previous exposures to the word or phrase, all of which were reflected in his later think-aloud activities except for consulting a dictionary, asking an expert or looking on the Internet. Mark recalled skipping a lot of paragraphs that contained unknown words or phrases as a younger reader, but now he refuses to move on until he understands what he is reading.

Out of the 47 different types of reading strategies that were investigated in the study, Mark demonstrated 32 in the narrative text, 27 in the periodical text, and 18 in the expository text (see Table 3 and Figure 1). Collectively, Mark confirmed the use of 28 out of 31 (90%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 9 out of 11 (82%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and 1 out of 5 (20%) in the evaluating comprehension category (see Figure 2). Mark skillfully utilized a wide array of reading strategies while consistently monitoring his comprehension. He accurately evaluated which information was requisite for understanding and which was irrelevant. Mark was a conscientious reader searching for evidence to confirm, deny, or revise his predictions. Whereas less skilled readers skip unfamiliar words without sufficient reflection, Mark exhibited a heightened awareness of what he did and did not understand, pinpointed sources of confusion, and attempted to repair comprehension breakdowns. “Strategic readers … formulate prior questions that they expect to be answered by a passage they are about to read … through procedures like these, readers take intentional steps to maximize the use of their cognitive resources to enable comprehension” (Kelly, 2003b, p. 245). Mark asked two types of questions: “lexical questions,” about words or phrases, and “story questions,” about events and characters or themes and concepts. In the beginning of the narrative text, Mark identified both types of questions. “I’m stuck with that sentence, ‘Mom rooting through the dumpster’” [lexical question] and “ … is it her mom or someone else’s mother?” [story question]. As Mark answered his questions, he updated his summarizations and generated new questions.

Figure 1

Number of strategies used in each passage (adult participants, n = 5).

Figure 2

Percentage of strategies used in each category (adult participants, n = 5).

Mark substituted familiar signs, words, or phrases for unfamiliar ones and checked if his substitutions made sense in context. Unsure of the meaning of the word rooting in the phrase, “Mom rooting through the dumpster,” Mark substituted two possible ASL signs: CHEERING and a classifier representing a person walking through an unspecified location. When neither substitution sufficiently fit the context of the phrase, Mark simultaneously activated a combination of higher level strategies: prior knowledge, mental imagery, self-questioning, and making an inference. First, Mark visualized people near a dumpster and asked himself, “What are they doing in a city by the dumpster?” Then, based on prior knowledge of living in a city, Mark answered his own question, “They are looking through the garbage at what’s been thrown away.” Finally, Mark generated an inference, “I’m guessing the word rooting is connected to picking through the garbage.” When Mark’s inference satisfactorily fit into the context of the phrase, he moved on.

Readers must first master basic linguistic processes before they can implement higher level reading processes (Kelly, 2003a). Mark’s use of reading strategies seemed to vary depending on the topic and level of complexity of the text. While reading the first portion of the periodical, Mark reported an inability to use higher level strategies, such as visualization and prediction, because he was struggling with basic comprehension tasks, such as deciphering unknown vocabulary, and he had no applicable prior knowledge. In contrast, Mark demonstrated the most high-level strategies while reading the narrative text, which contained familiar vocabulary, activated prior knowledge, and had a story-like nature that facilitated visualizations. Despite these variations, Mark still engaged higher level reading strategies for all three texts.

Jessica.

Jessica’s earliest memories of reading involve her mother pointing at pictures and corresponding text so Jessica could make meaningful associations between images and words. Jessica always enjoyed reading, even when it was a struggle. The only reading strategy Jessica reported in her interview was looking for contextual clues in consecutive sentences when attempting to decipher an unknown word or phrase, which was manifested in the think-aloud activity for the narrative text and the expository text.

Out of the 47 types of reading strategies that were investigated in the study, Jessica demonstrated 22 in the narrative text, 18 in the periodical text, and 16 in the expository text (see Table 3 and Figure 1). Together, Jessica exhibited 23 out of 31 (74%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 4 out of 11 (36%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and 1 out of 5 (20%) in the evaluating comprehension category (see Figure 2). Jessica presented as a skilled reader, quickly identifying a theme or purpose for reading, making predictions based on that theme, and then skimming unrelated information while thoroughly reading relevant information. “I have to prepare myself for what to expect to read … I identify what is important in a story … [and] while I read I think, ‘That information is important.’” As an active reader, she revised themes, predictions, and visualizations based on additional information. When she noticed a lack of further information about the party and a significant amount of additional information about the woman’s mother, Jessica modified the main idea, “I changed my expectations about what was important in the story—from party to mom.” Jessica modified her mental image of the speaker from a “high school kid,” based on the speaker’s embarrassment of her mom, to “an older woman,” based on additional information that the woman was married. Jessica’s initial inference reflected prior knowledge of teenagers getting embarrassed of parents and her revision assumed that people marry after high school. When confronted with a comprehension breakdown, Jessica used additional context from subsequent phrases to restore comprehension. Jessica initially inferred that the unknown word Vivaldi in the phrase, “I put some Vivaldi on,” was the name of a cream or clothing. After reading the next phrase, “ … hoping the music would settle me down,” she revised her inference concluding that Vivaldi was most likely a composer.

Jessica’s think-aloud responses demonstrated the use of numerous high-level reading strategies, such as self-questioning, predicting, visualizing, identifying the main ideas, and empathizing with characters to infer their feelings or intentions. “If I want to understand something, I have to visualize it … if I read something without thinking about what it looks like and picturing it in my mind, it’s lost.” Jessica’s strategies of visualizing and empathizing with characters seemed to be more prevalent for the first-person narrative text compared with the other two texts written in the third-person perspective. “When I read the word I… I try to visualize myself as that person in the story … I think about what that person sees and feels.” Jessica seemed especially skilled at minimizing extemporaneous details and focusing on the main idea to ensure a clear overall understanding. While upon probing, Jessica identified some strategies for constructing meaning; overall, her activation of strategies seemed instantaneous with limited metacognitive awareness. As a skilled fluent reader, it is likely that many strategies for constructing meaning from text at the word or phrase level were automatized, occurring implicitly with a minimal amount of conscious and intentional mental effort (Kelly, 2003b).

Sara.

During her interview, Sara reported that she was biased because she was an English teacher for many years and knew all the different techniques. Sara described initially looking at a book’s title to visualize what it will be about, then predicting and summarizing as she reads. For nonfiction material, Sara described analyzing the table of contents to help consider the background and the goal of the writing to help categorize the information she is about to read. All her self-reported strategies were manifested in the think-aloud process.

Of the 47 different types of reading strategies that were investigated in the study, Sara demonstrated 36 in the narrative text, 32 in the periodical text, and 20 in the expository text (see Table 3 and Figure 1). Collectively, Sara showed 28 out of 31 (90%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 11 out of 11 (100%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and 5 out of 5 (100%) in the evaluating comprehension category (see Figure 2). Sara demonstrated as the reader with the highest skill in this study, consistently reading at a critical level, exerting little mental effort on lower level cognitive operations, thereby mostly reporting high-level complex reading strategies, such as questioning ideas, making inferences about characters and authors, and evaluating the validity of a text. The quantity of inferences Sara made was consistent with other readers in this study, but the quality and depth of her inferences went far beyond the comprehension monitoring of text. In the narrative passage, Sara inferred the author’s intentional use of a literary device and revised her theme accordingly. “She [the author] took a moment to pause and make a commentary note to inform the reader what her relationship with her mother is like … it’s foreshadowing to the reader that this is important information.” In the periodical passage, Sara inferred the author to be “very educated” based on sophisticated word choices. Sara inquired about information not included in the text and inferred possible elaborations based on prior knowledge. Sara actively engaged with texts by constructing predictions or inferences, at times cautioning herself to gather more information, “I should hold back and not jump to conclusions.”

“Skilled readers normally possess large funds of domain knowledge [prior knowledge] and this facilitates their understanding of familiar topics even though a text may be newly encountered” (Kelly, 2003b, p. 245). Sara prefaced one inference with, “I get the feeling,” suggesting an intuition supported by a wealth of reading experiences and prior knowledge. Due to a vast amount of prior knowledge, Sara connected with every passage. Sara’s experience living in a city supported her comprehension of the narrative text; Sara based her inferences about the speaker in the periodical on people she knew who shared the same political convictions; and Sara engaged topic-specific prior knowledge for the expository text from her studies in the field of bilingual education. Prior knowledge typically enhances one’s understanding of a text, but Sara’s prior knowledge led to a few implicit elaborations that interfered with comprehension. These interferences never caused comprehension breakdowns as Sara quickly identified inconsistencies and engaged repair strategies to distinguish between inferences and information in the text. Sara explicitly described this metacognitive monitoring process, “I had to read it again because I let my prior knowledge influence what I was reading.”

Advanced readers “integrate meaning across sentence boundaries” in order to grasp “an evolving sense of the passage theme” (Kelly, 2003b, p. 243). Sara began with concrete text-based themes such as, “This bird must have a big impact on this person”; then constructed more abstract overarching themes such as, “I think the important theme is the changing of opinion on a political issue.” Initially, Sara reported a negative evaluation of the periodical passage, “It’s strange and it’s too political for my taste. I’m against guns.” By the end, Sara was able to surpass her personal disagreement with the author by dissociating from the literal content of the passage to generalize an overall theme with which she identified. “I see it as human. Everyone has their own lapse of sense … I look back on my own experience and I remember times I was going with a guy and think, ‘Why was I with that guy?’ It’s a lapse of reasoning, the same as in the story.”

Evaluating a text engages complex strategies, such as judgment of the writing, awareness of the author’s bias, and approval or disapproval of the content, characters, or message. Pressley and Afflerbach (1995) identified this type of evaluation as the third and highest category of reading strategies. Sara was the only reader in this study who demonstrated evaluations for all three passages. Sara guessed whom the author of the narrative passage was based on her evaluation of the writing style, “She [that author] tends to write dramatically about family relationships.” Sara expressed skepticism over the plausibility of the author in the periodical passage abandoning her political beliefs to support guns in order to kill a bothersome bird, yet she appreciated the author’s effort to try and convince the reader that such a transformation was possible. Sara stated, “I’ve met people with very strong liberal beliefs and they would not do what this woman is doing.” Amidst the dry legal facts of the expository text, Sara evaluated one adverb as an indication of the author’s bias, “That word ‘ironically’ reveals the author's attitude, obviously.”

Maria.

Maria recalled minimal reading experiences consisting of simple isolated sentences up until sixth grade when she described transferring into a regular class where she started learning English (in her words, e.g., vowels, verbs and nouns, things that Maria said her other class did not teach). Compared with the other participants in this study, Maria’s first reading experiences occurred significantly later and she reported fewer overall reading opportunities. Maria described consistently struggling with reading, typically rereading texts several times before being able to make connections and visualize what she is reading. When confronted with an unknown word, Maria continues reading, and if she cannot figure out the meaning, she will consult a dictionary. Maria described using context to identify the appropriate meaning for multiple meaning words. All these self-reported strategies, aside from consulting a dictionary, were apparent in the later think-aloud process.

Of the 47 investigated reading strategies, Maria demonstrated 22 in the narrative text, 14 in the periodical text, and 12 in the expository text (see Table 3 and Figure 1). In all, Maria demonstrated usage of 20 out of 31 (65%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 5 out of 11 (45%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and none in the evaluating comprehension category (see Figure 2). The reading strategies Maria most often used were mental imagery, activation of prior knowledge, and elaborating on text to compensate for comprehension deficits. Maria’s comprehension was most successful when she could make connections with her prior knowledge and produce rich mental imagery. Like a casting director, Maria surveyed her prior knowledge for people who shared characteristics or experiences with the characters in the text to cast in her mental images. Maria’s image of the main character in the first passage was a woman from a TV show who had a similar relationship with her mother. Maria also connected the main character and a man from a movie who displayed an analogous emotional response. “My image of this mother and daughter is still from that cop show I saw as a kid, but I thought of the other movie because it related to the emotions in the last paragraph.”

Because less fluent readers with impoverished English vocabularies have not automatized word recognition and retrieval of word meanings, they are forced to exhaust their mental effort and working memory capacity on the deciphering of word meanings (Moores & Meadow-Orlans, 1990). Maria seemed to struggle with the initial processing of the periodical text due to numerous unknown vocabulary words and a lack of topic-specific prior knowledge. Some readers in this study strategically substituted familiar words for unfamiliar ones and analyzed the context to determine if their substitution made sense. However, Maria unintentionally substituted a word that was orthographically similar yet semantically different from the original. This substitution of “wasp” for “wisp” resulted in a significant comprehension breakdown, which was never recognized or repaired. Lacking the prior knowledge that a “cardinal” is a type of bird and cardinalis is the name of the genus, Maria based her inferences on her prior knowledge of a wasp. “I assumed it was talking about a bug and it said ‘web’ so it must be a bug or a spider … .” The webs actually referred to fishing line used to ward off a bird. “It says, ‘I want to kill cardinalis,’ I didn’t know what it meant, so I assumed it was the name of a kind of bug.” Consistent with the findings of Armbruster and colleagues (2001) of less skilled readers, one unknown word lead to an irreparable breakdown in Maria’s overall comprehension of the periodical passage. Despite her comprehension breakdowns and inaccurate inferences, Maria still derived a meaningful interpretation. Maria identified the overall theme as, “ … a person obsessing with killing a bug.” If the word bug was replaced with “bird,” Maria’s theme could be acceptable.

“If a less skilled reader possesses exceptional domain knowledge in a certain subject area, he or she may be able to compensate for relatively low automaticity in basic reading processes” (Kelly, 2003b, p. 245). For most readers in this study, the expository text about Mexican-American children gaining equal access to education did not lend itself to mental imagery due to its dry legal jargon. However, as a Latina woman, Maria personally identified with the people in the article and expressed interest in the topic. “If I’m reading about something that I experienced in real life … after I make all of the connections between my own life and the characters in the text, I return to the text with a more comprehensive understanding of what I'm reading about.” Even though the expository text was technically the most advanced reading level, due to the familiar nature of the topic and Maria’s strong identification with the content, she activated her most effective strategies thereby maximizing her comprehension.

Natalie.

Natalie’s early exposure to reading began in first-grade learning isolated words from books. Later, she learned to analyze pictures and make connections with the print. In high school, Natalie expanded her English vocabulary by writing down unknown words from her reading and memorizing the meaning of five words every night. Natalie described struggling with reading and writing when she was younger but feels comfortable and enjoys reading as an adult. Natalie reported using strategies such as mental imagery, rereading, consulting a dictionary, and using prior knowledge, which is continually expanding as she gets older. All the strategies except for using a dictionary were evident in the think-aloud process.

Out of the 47 investigated reading strategies, Natalie demonstrated 24 in the narrative text, 27 in the periodical text, and 20 in the expository text (see Table 3 and Figure 1). Collectively, Natalie showed 25 out of 31 (81%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 10 out of 11 (91%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and none in the evaluating comprehension category (see Figure 2). Throughout her think-aloud responses, Natalie demonstrated both lower level inferences, based on passage-specific prior knowledge, and higher level inferences, based on topic-specific prior knowledge and personal experience. Natalie inferred the meaning of “NRA” based on prior knowledge of the word’s structure, “If it’s written in all capitals, it’s obviously the name of an organization,” and from the context of the surrounding sentences, “It’s obviously an organization that supports guns.” Natalie deciphered the word manhole from the context of the sentence and her personal experience living in an urban setting. For the expository text, Natalie based her predictions and inferences on her extensive topic-specific prior knowledge about both the theme of the article, which she immediately identified as “discrimination”; and the individuals depicted in the article, “I have a strong historical background and knowledge of Mexican culture.”

In the periodical passage, Natalie interpreted the word Cardinalis to mean a highly ranked priest instead of a scientific classification for a bird. After Natalie recognized that her initial inference no longer fit into the context of the passage, “I thought the cardinal was a high ranking priest, but it does not seem to make sense, maybe I’m wrong … I feel that it does not all connect,” she did not revise it. Despite this comprehension breakdown, Natalie accurately inferred, “I can tell that the woman went through a psychological transformation after she killed Cardinalis.” However, Natalie’s initial inference that Cardinalis was a person influenced her identification of the death penalty as the main idea after the main character shot and killed Cardinalis. “It’s an interesting statement about human beings. Should the law allow people to use guns? If I kill for self-protection, should I get the death penalty?” The passage had no mention of the death penalty, yet in a search for meaning Natalie elaborated onto the story based on her prior knowledge of a current social issue, “There’s a lot of hot debate about this topic [death penalty].” While gun control is an acceptable theme, Natalie probably would not have inferred a death penalty theme if she realized the speaker had killed a bird instead of a person.

Natalie’s extensive prior knowledge of history and social justice provided additional information that she effectively incorporated into her elaborations on the expository passage. Natalie seemed comfortable with the expository type of writing and mentioned that she had read similar legal commentaries on civil rights and discrimination and therefore had specific expectations of the content. In fact, she tied with Sara to use the most strategies (n = 20) in the expository text. Natalie prefaced one of her responses with, “This type of argument is very common … .” Natalie made associations between the Mexican-American family in the passage and people of other races who also experience racial discrimination. Ultimately, Natalie transcended the details differentiating her from the individuals in the article and correlated the racial discrimination experienced by the family with her personal experience with job discrimination on the basis of deafness.

Student Reading Strategies

Tony.

Tony began learning to read around the age of 3 both from teachers at school and from his brother at home, who would point to words while teaching him sign language. Initially, Tony learned to read by matching words with signs, but around the age of 7, Tony’s teacher taught him to make mental pictures of what he was reading. The sequence of strategies that Tony described for constructing meaning from text consisted of decoding words, visualizing the action described by the words, and then producing an internal sign language translation of the text. Strategies Tony described for repairing comprehension breakdowns included rereading, eliminating words to simplify the text, a strong use of visualization, and substituting familiar for unfamiliar words and assessing whether the substitution matches the context of the sentence. All the strategies were apparent in his think-aloud process.

Tony demonstrated usage of 23 out of 31 (74%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 7 out of 11 (64%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and none in the evaluating comprehension category (see Table 4 and Figure 3). Tony presented as an advanced and thoughtful reader, eloquently able to describe his internal thought processes in response to the think-aloud questions. Tony’s most effective high-level strategies seemed to be visualization, inferring characters’ feelings, and then empathizing with characters by imagining himself in the story. Tony described shifting comprehension strategies to reflect point of view; for first person point of view “I imagine that I am inside the character” and for third person point of view, “it was like I was watching a movie.” Whereas other readers described rereading text to decipher the meaning of unknown words, Tony transformed the text into a visual performance in his mind in order to conduct a visual analysis of the context. “When I was trying to figure out the word brag, I had to remove myself from the story and watch the action … by watching the movement, I could match which meaning fit the word.” After visualizing and analyzing the character proudly showing his friends his good-looking baby, Tony substituted the ASL signs for SHOW and TELL in place of the unfamiliar English word brag. Tony concluded that brag meant “pay attention to me and my baby because we look good.” His definition may not be found in a dictionary, but it made sense within the context and successfully restored his comprehension.

Figure 3

Percentage of strategies used in each category (student participants, n = 6).

Although Tony did not explicitly describe self-questioning about what he was reading, his statements suggested that self-questioning was implicitly occurring. Tony described revising his inferences, which most likely incorporated self-questioning of previous assumptions that conflicted with new information in the text. Tony described revising his initial assumption that the story took place in a hospital between an adult and a real baby once he realized that the main character was a young student taking care of a plastic baby for a class assignment.

Throughout his think-aloud responses, Tony demonstrated several advanced strategies similar to those of the skilled adult readers in this study, such as visualization, use of prior knowledge, and empathizing with the characters. If Tony did not share the same experience as characters in the text, he still connected any applicable prior knowledge to aspects of the text to enhance his understanding. Tony had not experienced having a child, but he recalled personal experience with his baby nieces. Tony had not taken a child rearing class, but he recalled his experience of being a student. Tony constructed alternative inferences simultaneously and retained them for further analysis, “It sounds like he’s already a father of a baby, but I’m not sure. If he’s not, he at least feels proud of himself because he did a good job.” As Tony departed from the text to develop elaborate visualizations and imagine what the main character felt like, he remained vigilant of the words he was reading. Tony never stopped monitoring his understanding by checking the accuracy of his inferences within the context of the story.

Tamara.

Tamara stated that she first learned to read from teachers reading books aloud using Simultaneous Communication. Tamara did not seem highly aware of her thought processes during the think-aloud task, but during her interview, she mentioned visualization, predicting, connecting to past experiences, and matching English words to ASL signs. When confronted with an unknown word, Tamara identified strategies such as looking to other sentences for related information or looking up words in the dictionary. Other than the usage of a dictionary, one strategy was mentioned in the interview but not manifested in the think-aloud process: matching English words to ASL signs.

Tamara demonstrated usage of 12 out of 31 (39%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 3 out of 11 (27%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and none in the evaluating comprehension category (see Table 4 and Figure 3). Despite a minimal metacognitive awareness of her comprehension strategies, Tamara was able to successfully get the gist of what she was reading. Tamara described mental imagery as a consistently useful strategy for constructing meaning. Tamara seemed to activate prior knowledge and personal experience to support her predictions, resulting in both accurate and inaccurate elaborations on the text. Tamara’s prediction that the main character was going to see fireworks was most likely based on her personal experience of celebrating Independence Day. However, after gathering more information from the text, she revised her prediction, “It’s not talking about fireworks, instead, they went to play games and dance with children… .”

When the interviewer inquired about unfamiliar words in the text, Tamara identified “picnic.” Tamara explained, “I tried to figure it out by connecting it to other sentences but it did not help.” This instance indicates some degree of comprehension monitoring by identifying the cause of a comprehension breakdown and applying one text-based strategy of reading the surrounding sentences to gain context. However, when Tamara’s initial repair strategy was ineffective, she seemed unable to activate alternative strategies and merely gave up and skipped the word. This contrasted with the adult readers in this study who employed multiple repair strategies, such as substituting familiar words, using mental imagery, or activating prior knowledge. Another difference between Tamara and the adult readers in this study is that she did not seem to generate questions about the text for which to look for answers as she read. This does not necessarily mean that Tamara did not engage in self-questioning but that she did not explicitly state it in her think-aloud responses.

Mario.

Mario described reading most successfully when he found a story interesting and could imagine himself in the story. Mario reported often making connections between his prior life experiences and the reading material. The reading strategies Mario described for repairing comprehension breakdowns consisted of rereading, reading ahead for additional context, consulting a dictionary, asking for help, creating mental imagery, and activating prior knowledge. Other than consulting a dictionary and asking for help, all the reported strategies were apparent in the think-aloud process.

Mario demonstrated usage of 15 out of 31 (48%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 3 out of 11 (27%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and none in the evaluating comprehension category (see Table 4 and Figure 3). Mario performed as a skilled reader for his reading level, exhibiting an effective use of reading strategies. Mario visualized himself as the main character and empathized with the character’s feelings. He related the content about taking care of a baby to his own personal experience with his baby brother, and he reread and utilized substitutions and contextual clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words. Mario demonstrated some of the same strategies as the advanced readers in this study, such as translating text into sign language, substituting familiar for unfamiliar words or phrases, and then evaluating his substitutions within the context of the story. Mario described a strategy of reorganization, “I knew all of the words, but there was a complicated sentence … I tried to solve it by turning it into my own sentence that I understood.” One factor distinguishing Mario from the skilled adult readers in this study was that he did not demonstrate use of alternative strategies to repair comprehension breakdowns. Even though Mario demonstrated the ability to use multiple repair strategies, when his initial strategy was ineffective, he gave up and moved on.

Mario elaborated additional details, emotions, and dialogue onto the story that seemed consistent with the context and promoted understanding. The fact that the main character in the story was a young male student seemed to facilitate Mario’s visualization of himself as the main character. At one point, Mario further personalized the story to imagine how deafness might impact the events in the story. “I decided to imagine myself as the father. I wondered if I left my baby alone … what would I do since I can’t hear?” This self-generated question beyond the word or phrase level suggested that Mario may have internally generated other questions during reading. This was the only example in this study of a participant questioning the impact of deafness on a character in a passage. Overall, Mario seemed comfortable with most concepts and vocabulary in the text and successfully constructed his own internalized understanding.

Lisa.

Lisa suggested that her reading ability depended on her level of interest and the level of complexity of the writing. The reading strategies Lisa described during her interview consisted of making personal connections with a text, rereading, looking for connections between the sentences, and using mental imagery. All the strategies were noticeable in the think-aloud process.

Lisa demonstrated usage of 13 out of 31 (42%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, none in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and zero in the evaluating comprehension category (see Table 4 and Figure 3). Lisa seemed to empathize with the main character of the story, a child going to school, describing, “I feel excited just like Milton.” Lisa reported use of mental imagery and several elaborations of feelings and intentions onto the characters. In response to a probe about predictions, Lisa generated two alternative predictions simultaneously. “He will be playing and be late again when called to go to school … [or] maybe his parents get to school and … they are happy that he is early for school.” Lisa also related the text to her own experience going to school, and addressed differences between herself and the main character, stating that she was never late for school like the main character.

For her final summary, Lisa reorganized the story structure to present a detailed and comprehensive summarization. Her summarization of the text indicated an accurate internalization of the story, including portions of dialogue paraphrased into her own words and maintaining the meaning and sequence of events in the story. Lisa did not demonstrate any metacognitive strategies within the category of monitoring and improving comprehension that tend to occur with breakdowns in comprehension.

Amy.

Amy could not recall her first exposure to reading. Amy suggested that her level of skill for reading was dependent on her level of enjoyment of the text. The reading strategies identified during her interview were using context and consulting a dictionary. She appeared to use context to construct meaning during the think-aloud process.

Amy demonstrated usage of 11 out of 31 (35%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 4 out of 11 (36%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and none in the evaluating comprehension category (see Table 4 and Figure 3). Amy successfully understood the events and main idea of the passage but seemed to lack the metacognitive awareness or language to explicitly describe her internal thought processes. Amy seemed to consistently read for understanding. Without sufficient understanding after the first section, Amy was unable to provide a summary; after gathering more information, she generated a concise, yet comprehensive summary. Although Amy did not explicitly describe any internal self-questioning during reading, she seemed to echo a question to the interviewer that may have first appeared in her mind, “[Blossom is] a person … am I wrong?” The interviewer did not respond to her question, and after reading the second portion of text, Amy began her think-aloud response with the answer to her previous question, “Blossom is the name of a pig.” In this example, Amy initially constructed an inaccurate inference, which she questioned, recognized as incorrect after reading further in the text, and thus revised.

For the phrase, “banging on the door with her snout,” Amy demonstrated the strategy of using surrounding contextual clues to infer that the unfamiliar word snout meant doorknob. At the time of this inference, Amy had also inferred that the character of Blossom was a person. After reading the second portion of text, Amy revised one inference and identified Blossom as a pig. If Amy had reread the phrase about “her snout” after realizing that Blossom was a pig, she may have revised her previous inference about the meaning of the word snout. Amy inferred the meaning of another unfamiliar word by rereading, translating the text into sign language, and using contextual clues. Amy inferred the definition of “unconscious” as, “to not feel anything, like knocked out.” The accurate inference effectively fit the context and replaced the unknown word.

Carlos.

Carlos identified improving his reading skills by learning how to make pictures in his mind. The reading strategies Carlos identified were rereading, visualization, and analysis of whether his mental picture matched the action described, all of which were later apparent in his think-aloud process.

Carlos demonstrated usage of 16 out of 31 (52%) reading strategies in the constructing meaning category, 1 out of 11 (9%) in the monitoring and improving comprehension category, and none in the evaluating comprehension category (see Table 4 and Figure 3). Considering that Carlos did not begin learning English until his teenage years, his ability to construct meaning from print and explicitly describe his internal thought processes was impressive. Carlos was an active reader during the think-aloud task, consistently activating prior knowledge, translating text into sign language, using contextual clues, and visualizing the actions in the story. Carlos’ elaborations on the text, to compensate for gaps in understanding, were both accurate and inaccurate. Carlos inadvertently substituted the sign BASEBALL-BAT for the unknown word basket and thus elaborated that the story was about playing baseball at the park, which he had personally experienced. In an attempt to intentionally repair a comprehension breakdown, Carlos relied on contextual clues and prior knowledge to reach an accurate conclusion. “I figured out the meaning of fed … after lunch, they had little pieces of bread left over that they could feed the birds. I experienced it myself at a park before.” For another comprehension breakdown, Carlos deciphered an approximate meaning by identifying a familiar root word and generating a mental image. “I do not know the word footprints but I think … it’s their feet walking away … I saw the word foot and then I pictured in my mind the people walking away and I figured out the meaning.”

Limitations in Carlos’ exposure to English were evident in some of his inaccurate translations of text into sign language. Carlos unconsciously made an orthographically similar substitution of the familiar sign LUCKY in place of an unfamiliar girl’s name, Lucy. Carlos also substituted the sign for PARTS in place of the unfamiliar word packed. However, when Carlos substituted the sign SWIMMING for the word swinging, he recognized that it did not make sense in the context of the sentence. Carlos was able to self-correct his sign to SWINGING because he knew the meaning of the word swinging, he simply misread it. Most of Carlos’ comprehension breakdowns seemed to be caused by an impoverished English vocabulary due to limited exposure. However, Carlos demonstrated an active use of reading strategies suggesting that as he builds upon his reading experiences and expands his English vocabulary, he will continue to improve his reading strategies and comprehension.

Conclusions

This study was guided by the following research question: What are the reading strategies used by adult and student deaf readers? For the purpose of analysis, all the strategies within a category were ranked equally in terms of quality. Furthermore, instead of the total instances of each strategy’s usage, the number of how many different strategies were demonstrated in the think-aloud process was analyzed. Several outstanding patterns were revealed from the study.

First, skilled deaf readers in the study were capable of using multiple reading strategies proficiently. As discussed in the review of the literature, several previous studies compared deaf readers with their hearing peers and found significant deficits with deaf readers in the quantity and quality of reading strategies used; while few studies investigated the cases of highly skilled deaf readers. Sara, the deaf adult with the most advanced reading skills in this study, demonstrated 100% of reading strategies in monitoring and improving comprehension as well as in evaluating comprehension, and 90% of the strategies in constructing meaning. This study showed that both student and adult groups had a range of highly skilled readers who demonstrated effective usage of multiple reading strategies and less skilled readers who demonstrated a more limited usage of reading strategies. Sara, the adult participant who displayed the highest degree of reading strategies used, also demonstrated the highest quantity of reading strategies across all three different texts; while Maria, who displayed the lowest degree of reading strategies used, showed the fewest reading strategies in the reading of each text. Meanwhile, Tony, who had one of the highest reading grade equivalency scores (seventh grade) among the student participants, demonstrated the highest quantity of reading strategies as well.

Second, generally speaking, the adults in this study exhibited more reading strategies than the students. Differences were not only evident in the quantity of strategies used but also in the quality, complexity, and effectiveness of the strategies used by the more skilled adult readers and the less skilled student readers (see Table 5). When engaging with a text, adult participants demonstrated taking an active approach, constructing numerous self-generated questions for which they would seek out the answers as they read along. Student participants indicated a more passive approach, constructing fewer, if any, self-generated questions about a text. Adult participants had a heightened awareness of the reading process and were able to pinpoint sources of confusion and select the most appropriate reading strategy to employ for a specific task; while student participants often skipped unfamiliar words or phrases without sufficient reflection, and when using reading strategies, they would frequently utilize the same “default” strategies regardless of the task at hand. Two participants, one student and one adult, were observed making unintentional substitutions, such as replacing an unknown word with an orthographically similar yet semantically different familiar word, often resulting in breakdowns in comprehension. In contrast, most of the adult participants and several student participants made intentional substitutions such as replacing an unknown word with a familiar word and then evaluating whether the substituted word appropriately fit into the context of the passage. Adult participants continually assessed the accuracy of their strategies as well as their overall understanding of the passage. An important distinction in this study was the adult participants’ ability to integrate multiple reading strategies simultaneously compared with student participants’ tendency to use individual isolated strategies one at a time. This distinction was also evident when confronting a breakdown in comprehension, adult participants often engaged multiple repair strategies while student participants engaged only one repair strategy and gave up if it was unsuccessful. The strategies that are used competently by skilled adult deaf participants but not by student deaf participants should be explicitly taught to deaf students during reading instruction.

Table 5

Comparative strategies chart of adult and student participants

More skilled adult participants	Less skilled student participants
Pinpoint sources of confusion	Skip unfamiliar words or phrases without sufficient reflection
Intentional substitutions	Unintentional substitutions
Integrate multiple strategies simultaneously	Use individual, isolated strategies one at a time
Depth and breadth of prior knowledge	Limited prior knowledge
Activate a system of “checks and balances” to ensure accuracy	No system for checking accuracy
Choose the most appropriate reading strategies for a specific task	Utilize the most frequently used “default” reading strategies regardless of the task
Engage multiple repair strategies for cognitive breakdowns	Engage a single repair strategy for cognitive breakdowns
Mastered basic comprehension tasks	Still struggling with basic comprehension tasks
Generate questions and seek out answers	Do not generate questions about the text
Evaluate texts	Do not evaluate texts

Third, the most significant difference among the readers in this study was found in the third category on the reading strategies checklist: evaluating comprehension. “Evaluation focuses on the worth of what has been processed” (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995, p. 79). In their study of 38 primary research studies, Pressley & Afflerbach found relatively few self-report studies identifying evaluative statements about reading. None of the student participants in this study demonstrated evaluative strategies. While three out of five adult participants demonstrated at least one strategy in the area of evaluating comprehension, two of them exhibited only one evaluation for one of the three passages. Only Sara, the highest skilled adult reader, exhibiting the highest quantity and quality of strategies in all three categories, demonstrated complex intuitive evaluations for all three passages. This finding suggests that only a reader who is highly skilled in activating reading strategies can sufficiently transcend the information in a text in order to assign it a subjective evaluation.

Fourth, in accordance with the findings of Toscano and colleagues (2002), Sara’s early accessible communication with her family and early exposure to reading with numerous reading opportunities were most likely significant predictors of her high proficiency in English and skillful usage of multiple strategies during reading. Sara’s early experiences contributed to her depth and breadth of prior knowledge upon which to rely during reading and her fluency in English vocabulary and structure. Through early accessible signed communication, Sara inquired about words around her, initiating numerous incidental-learning opportunities as her parents explained word meanings and concepts to her (see also the theories of mind on the importance of early access to communication and incidental learning, e.g., Meristo et al., 2007; Peterson, Wellman & Liu, 2005).

Fifth, regardless of the reading levels, all deaf participants in the study were able to demonstrate several reading strategies during their think-alouds, such as: visualizing/use of mental imagery to construct and reconstruct meaning, summarizing or paraphrasing parts of the text, and constructing explanations from prior knowledge. During the interview, 9 out of 11 participants self-reported the use of visualization or mental image in reading and 10 recognized the use of prior knowledge. It seems that the deaf readers in this study understood the importance of using prior knowledge and tried to apply it during reading; however, a review of the literature (McAnally, Rose, & Quigley, 2007) ranks the use of prior knowledge for deaf readers in general as inefficient. It is possible that some of them either do not have adequate prior knowledge due to the lack of a mutual communication system with their hearing parents (McAnally et al., 2007) or do not have the opportunities to use or develop this skill because the assigned reading for them is not challenging enough.

Sixth, for the 47 investigated reading strategies, if any one of them was self-reported by the participants during the interviews, it was apparent later in the think-aloud process as well, except in the case of Tamara, who reported the use of matching English words to ASL signs but did not show its usage during the think-aloud. As discussed before, it might be that she did not explicitly state it in her think-aloud responses. Furthermore, in general, the more strategies self-reported in the interview, the more strategies actually used during the think-aloud process. These results suggest that many deaf participants in the study were not only able to use multiple strategies during reading processes but also capable of talking about these strategies consciously outside of a reading task.

Seventh, reading strategies learned in one written language might be able to be transferred to assisting reading in another language. For example, although Carlos had the lowest reading grade equivalency score (second grade), the number of his demonstrated reading strategies was higher than the scores of many other students. In fact, Carlos was able to demonstrate 52% of the strategies in constructing meaning, which was the second highest score among all the student participants. It might be possible that before moving to the United States at the age of 14, Carlos had already developed some reading strategies in Spanish and was able to use these strategies in reading English. His low reading score might be a reflection of his unfamiliarity with the English language, not his lack of reading strategies.

Finally, the genre of the text may have correlated with the quantity of reading strategies used. All the adult participants read three genres of text: narrative, periodical and expository. In the case of four out of five adult participants, the most reading strategies were demonstrated during the reading of the narrative passage (see Figure 1), although the narrative text had a higher Flesch–Kincaid reading grade level than the periodical text (9.7 vs. 6.4). In contrast, the fewest reading strategies were demonstrated during the reading of the expository text for all five adult participants.

Meanwhile, we admit that there were several limitations of the study. First, the first author conducted the original study as her master’s project under the second author’s advising. There was no attempt to have a second person translate the participants’ videotapes. Second, because the adult participants and the student participants varied considerably on their reading levels (e.g., student participant Carlos was reading at a second grade level while adult participant Sara was a doctoral candidate who was reading at a much higher level), different reading materials were used in the study. All adult participants read the same three passages, and the student participants read the materials on their reading level based on their latest reading grade equivalency score. Therefore, we should be cautious in interpreting the total numbers of strategies used by the adult participants and the student participants as groups. Finally, similar to the limitation reported by Schirmer (2003), there might be the potential confounding effect of reading in written English and reporting in ASL to describe their thoughts. Furthermore, the ASL skills of some student participants might not be good enough to fully express themselves on their thinking processes, at least at the same level as the adult participants. Lisa was the only participant who did not appear to use any monitoring and improving comprehension strategies in the study. Lisa may not have developed these metacognitive strategies yet; but it is also possible that her limited ASL skills prevented her from explaining metacognitive strategies used during reading.

In An Examination of Twenty Literacy, Science, and Mathematics Practices Used to Educate Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, Easterbrooks and Stephenson (2006) listed teaching metacognitive reading strategies as one of the best practices in literacy education. The finding of the current study confirmed the importance of teaching metacognitive reading strategies to students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Unfortunately, according to the comprehensive review of literature on teaching reading to children who are deaf (Schirmer & McGough, 2005), there had not been any studies designed specifically to improve comprehension monitoring or metacognitive skills of deaf students.

More research is needed in the area of metacognition and reading among deaf students. It is important for research to continue identifying the lack of reading strategies (particularly the ones that relate to metacognition) among deaf students and the potential causes so that educators can further develop methods of remediation. In addition, more research examining the use of effective reading strategies among skilled deaf readers is needed for further development of instructional methods for struggling readers. All the student participants in this study demonstrated that they were capable of using some reading strategies, while some were utilizing these strategies proficiently already. This study supports that all deaf students can greatly benefit from further development of these skills so that they have the chance to become successful adult readers like the highest skilled participants in this study. Overall, we join the call of Paul (2001, 2009) to strongly encourage teachers to provide deaf children with more opportunities to learn, practice, and implement advanced reading strategies during reading tasks.

Conflicts of Interest

No conflicts of interest were reported.