How Do We Define Comprehension?

Picture yourself as a reader.

Perhaps you see yourself relaxing in the evening, burrowed into a comfortable chair, relishing a good book. Or poised in front of a computer screen as you navigate your way through a progression of enticing websites, quickly inventorying content as you track down a needed snippet of information. It is easy to visualize yourself in a multitude of settings, interacting with a wide spectrum of texts, engaged in the act we call “reading.”

We see people reading all the time, and it is easy to describe the overt indicators of reading — eyes focusing, pages turning, digital texts scrolling — but how would you describe the mental behaviors of reading? What happens in the mind of a reader, the part we cannot see?

Now consider the following “reads.”

Open each one.

How does skilled reading develop?

Reading is an active thinking process, and students develop it through rich experiences thinking their way through texts.

According to the Simple View of Reading, reading comprehension depends on two essential components: the relationship between word recognition and language comprehension. Word recognition is the student’s ability to accurately and efficiently read the words on the page. Language comprehension is the student’s ability to understand the meanings of words, sentences, ideas, and connected language.

Both are necessary, and neither works on its own. One reader may decode words accurately but struggle to understand what they read, while another may understand spoken language well but be unable to read the words on the page. In either case, comprehension breaks down. The Simple View of Reading gives teachers a starting lens for where the reading process is breaking down so they can decide what kind of practice or targeted instruction the student needs next.

Scarborough’s Rope answers a follow-up question: what skills are developing within those two components over time? It breaks each of them into the underlying skills that contribute to skilled reading.

How do the strands of the reading rope combine to form a process?

These strands are interconnected and mutually supportive. Strong word recognition skills enable efficient decoding, which frees up cognitive resources for language comprehension. Similarly, robust language comprehension skills facilitate deeper word understanding and contextualized reading.

That’s how the Rope represents not just the elements of learning to read, but also the process toward fluency. As students progress, their word recognition becomes increasingly automatic, and their language comprehension becomes increasingly strategic.

In the word recognition strand, readers focus on decoding individual words, relying on phonological awareness and phonics. With practice and instruction, word recognition becomes more efficient and effortless. This automaticity frees up cognitive resources for comprehension and higher-level thinking.

In the language comprehension strand, readers learn to engage actively with the text, ask questions, make connections and predictions, and monitor understanding. Strategic readers use comprehension strategies—summarizing, visualizing, self-questioning, and more—to deepen their understanding of what’s on the page.

As you can imagine, this does not happen overnight; it requires skilled teaching and practice over time.

The Scarborough Rope Model can help educators think about how the strands of reading skill interact with and boost one another. Without any strand, the rope is weaker. By strengthening each strand deliberately, teachers can help more readers become strategic and automatic readers.

Those two processes are intertwined and interdependent. The Rope shows that, as readers progress, they get better at combining automatic word recognition with strategic reading skills.

They can effortlessly recognize words, allowing them to focus on comprehending the text and performing higher-level thinking. By strategically applying language comprehension skills, readers construct meaning, make connections, and analyze the text.

This combination of automatic and strategic skills supports reading and facilitates engagement with more complex and challenging texts. Following the Reading Rope framework, teachers can more easily identify where struggling readers may need additional instruction.

Take a good look at the eight strands. In a moment, you’ll work with each one.

Sort the strands.

Eight strands, one at a time. Decide: does this strand belong to word recognition or language comprehension? Each answer unlocks what the strand actually means.

Bring it back to your classroom.