The Effects of Inference Training and Practice on Young Children's Reading Comprehension

TWO EXPERIMENTAL METHODS intended to improve inferential reading comprehension were investigated with second-grade children. One method focused on a prereading strategy in which children utilized previous experiences to predict events in the upcoming story. The second method provided practice in answering questions which required inferences between text and prior knowledge. The instruction was applied to ten basal-reader stories. Four dependent measures compared the comprehension ability of the two experimental groups and a control group. On comprehension questions following the instructional stories, the performance of the children in both experimental groups surpassed that of the control children. Standardized test scores and scores on an