Knowledge of vocabulary plays a critical role in the complex process of reading comprehension. If a reader must constantly pause to decipher the meaning of words, the reading pace decreases, and in the educational setting the individual becomes labeled a slow reader. Slow readers are commonplace in elementary schools and teachers must develop curricula to address their needs. The articles "Improving Reading Comprehension Strategies through Listening" by Aarnoutse et al. and "Teaching Vocabulary to Children with Wordfinding Difficulties Using a Combined Semantic and Phonological Approach: An Efficacy Study" by Easton et al. analyze methods to enhance word identification, thereby improving reading comprehension.
The authors in these investigations have similar goals for their research. Aarnoutse et al. sought to study the effects of decoding (word identification) training on subjects' performance of four text comprehension strategies. This performance was measured in a listening setting. The four text comprehension strategies tested were: questioning, clarifying obscurities and inconsistencies in a text, summarising, and predicting how a text will continue after reading a paragraph. Easton et al. sought to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching vocabulary using a curriculum with semantic and phonological features. Of note is the criticism of Aarnoutse et al. regarding the instruction of vocabulary absent the context of reading comprehension: "As long as decoding is very poor, teachers emphasise the teaching and practice of decoding skills . . . One may wonder whether it is wise to spend so much time on word identification skills" (Aarnoutse, 1997, p. 211.)
Both the Aarnoutse et al. and Easton et al. studies used students from special schools as subjects. The researchers performed their studies in The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, respectively. The subjects of the Aarnoutse et al. study were 9-11 year old stude...