What is the purpose of reading comprehension instruction?

The purpose of reading comprehension instruction is to equip students with strategies that enhance their ability to understand, analyze, and recall information from texts. This understanding is crucial as it enables learners to engage with the material on a deeper level, allowing them to extract meaning and context, which ultimately contributes to their overall literacy skills. By focusing on comprehension, instruction helps students not only grasp the surface content of the text but also connect ideas, infer meanings, and evaluate arguments, which are vital skills for academic success and critical thinking.

The emphasis on comprehension can also support other areas of literacy, such as writing and vocabulary development, as students learn to interpret and respond to texts. This approach ensures that students are not merely decoding words but are genuinely engaging with and making sense of the information presented to them.