REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Reading Comprehension

Reading in academic learning is a critical skill for learners to succeed from the primary
up to tertiary level. According to Krashen & Terrel (as cited in Nurul, 2014), encompassing all
four macro skills, reading contributes to the overall learning competence. It can be inferred that
reading can influence another skill by providing background knowledge to support ideas
processed and understood through reading. In general, reading ability and reading
comprehension is essential in meaning making.

Duke and Pearson (2001) find comprehension synonymous with understanding or the
ability to get the meaning of something. Reading comprehension is the primary objective in
reading, for reading without comprehension is like articulately uttering a word without
understanding its meaning. According to Herber, 1970; Snider, 1988; and McCormick, 1992;
reading comprehension can be defined generally as the ability to extract meaning or acquire
understanding of texts from printed materials; determine the context from the author’s
perspective; and synthesize gained information to prior knowledge in order to meet the learner’s
own needs and objectives. The idea that there are different levels of reading comprehension, each
of which imposes different cognitive demands on the reader and requires varying levels of
interaction with the text, is not new (Basaraba, et al, 2014).

Barrett’s Taxonomy of Reading Comprehension

The Barrett Taxonomy (Clymer, 1968) categorized reading comprehension into five
levels of comprehension and is primarily designed for comprehension questions and/ or test
questions for reading to assist classroom teachers in question developments. The five identified
levels: literal, reorganizational, inferential, evaluation, and appreciation, are in arranged
hierarchical presentation from the lowest to the highest level of reading. This system
classification was mainly influenced by Bloom’s Taxonomy which classified three domains of
thinking behavior: affective, psychomotor, and cognitive. The hierarchy ranges from knowledge,
comprehension, application, and analysis to synthesis and evaluation, however, a revised
continuum by Anderson et al., 2001 included remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing,
evaluating, and creating in the cognitive domain encompassing lower to higher thinking skills.

On the other hand, Barrett’s taxonomy on Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of

Reading Comprehension (Byrne, n.d.) offers a more specific and detailed category to understand
and examine the cognitive levels of reading comprehension. Literal and reorganizational
comprehension dealt with facts presented in the reading material and requires the reader to recall
or recognize the information explicitly. However, an exception to this is an instance of synthesis
where facts are combined, creating a totally new idea giving students opportunity to creatively
add ideas to the presented information. The other three categories: inferential, evaluation, and
appreciation, usually connects the student experiences and often leads to the development of
open-ended questions. Though education focuses on higher order questions, varied responses
from these open-ended questions are equally vital for satisfactory responses to these questions
incorporates the related information gained from factual questions. Due to this, additional
knowledge is gained by both the teacher and the student since all facts are verified while
practicing higher cognitive thinking processes.

Literal and reorganizational comprehension levels requires readers to simply recall or reorganize
the facts presented in the text. Both levels incorporate closed questions usually responded by one
or single correct response. The three remaining levels requires the reader’s insights and
perspectives of the read literary piece. Due to this, questions are open-ended and responses are
like essays.

BARRETT TAXONOMY - educational taxonomy (weebly.com)

Literal Comprehension Level.

According to Rupley and Blair (1983), literal comprehension is happening in two ways:
recall and recognition. To recall the main idea or a detail and recognize specific information that
is part or provided in the passage allows to measure whether students have understood ideas
explicitly stated in the selection. Facts must also be recognized as existing within the context of a
passage to determine whether or not comprehension has actually occurred; otherwise it is unclear
if the reader comprehended what was read or relied on prior knowledge and understanding.
Purposes for reading and teacher’s questions designed to elicit responses at this level may range
from simple to complex. A simple task in literal comprehension may be the recognition or recall
of a single fact or incident. A more complex task might be the recognition or recall or a series of
facts or the sequencing of incidents in a reading selection. This level of understanding is
dependent upon students’ word-level processing skills, or their ability to accurately identify
individual words and understand the meaning created by the combination of words into
propositions and sentences (Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005).

Inferential Comprehension Level.

Inferential comprehension requires readers to go beyond just recognizing facts but to

make coherent inferences derived from the texts explicitly stated un the passage. This level can
be somehow an extension of the recognition step of literal comprehension (Applegate, Quinn, &
Applegate, 2002; Snider, 1988). In general, then, inferential comprehension is stimulated by
purposes for reading and teachers’ questions which demand thinking and imagination that go
beyond the printed page. Prior knowledge, regardless of where this knowledge came from, is an
integral part of inference.

As this level requires the reader to go beyond the information given by the writer, the
reader should be able to see the significance of the data; to note various relationships such as
cause effect and relation of the part to the whole, to make comparison, to draw conclusion and
inference and to make generalizations. The crucial factor distinguishing inference questions from
recognition and recall questions is that their answers are not explicitly stated but must be inferred
(Bryne, n.d).

Reorganizational Comprehension Level.

This level requires the reader’s involvement with the information presented as he uses it
to formulate or rethink ideas of his own. Question at this level might consist of open-ended
queries which require the reader to include his own knowledge, view, and value.

Reorganization requires the student to analyze, synthesize, and/ or organize ideas or

information explicitly stated in the selection. To produce the desired thought product, the reader
may utilize the statements of the author verbatim or he or she may paraphrase or translate the
author’s statements.
Evaluation or Critical Comprehension Level.

The third and most complex level of reading comprehension proposed by the levels of
comprehension theory is evaluative comprehension also known as critical or applied, can be seen
as an extension of the knowledge, skills, and strategies required of literal and inferential
comprehension tasks. This extension is evidenced by the fact that the reader is required to
understand the text written on the page (literal comprehension), make interpretations about the
author’s intended meaning and/or understand the relationships between the elements presented in
the text (inferential comprehension), and subsequently analyze or evaluate the information
acquired from the text in terms of prior knowledge or experiences (McCormick, 1992; Rupley &
Blair, 1983) or knowledge that is imported from outside of the text (Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti,
Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001).

According to Herber (1970), in this level readers are required to juxtapose what they have
read in the text with their own prior knowledge and experience, a juxtaposition that creates new
meanings and/or relationships that extend beyond the scope of the text. The creation of these new
meanings and relationships involves a myriad of different skills including divergent thinking,
critical analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Vacca et al., 2009), in addition to affective, or
personal and emotional responses, when necessary (Rupley & Blair, 1983). No longer, in other
words, is understanding dependent solely on information that is presented in the text, whether
explicitly stated or appearing across multiple clauses in the text; instead, students are required to
hold information that is presented in the text in their working memory and simultaneously access
information, knowledge, or experience from their long term memory to analyze or evaluate what
they have just read, thereby increasing the demands played on their cognitive processing.
Drawing on the more basic levels of understanding, evaluative comprehension is posited to
demand more of the reader and thus represents higher order understanding of text.

Appreciation Comprehension Level.

Appreciation involves all the previously cited cognitive dimensions of reading, for it
deals with the psychological and aesthetic impact of the selection on the reader. Appreciation
calls for the student to be emotionally and aesthetically sensitive to the work and to have a
reaction to the worth of its psychological and artistic elements. Appreciation includes both the
knowledge of and the emotional response to literary techniques, forms, styles, and structures.

Recent Studies about Barret’s Taxonomy

Barett’s Taxonomy has recently become an issue to scholars for the validity of having
five categories under reading comprehension. Several theorists and psychologists claimed to
have lesser categories appropriate for comprehension and scholar across the globe have
conducted studies to test the validity of Barret’s hierarchical categories of reading
comprehension. Javed et al. (2015) put forward Barrett’s taxonomy on developing standardized
reading comprehension modules to facilitate reading comprehension among Malaysian
secondary school ESL students. They focus on the construction to develop different sub-skills of
reading comprehension to answer three levels of Barrett’s taxonomy, namely literal,
reorganization, and inferential comprehension. They believe that these three categories are
similar in Bloom’s taxonomy revised by Anderson et al. (2001) and in Day & Park’s (2015)
taxonomy of reading comprehension. In their subsequent study on reading strategies to teach
these three categories of comprehension questions, Javed et al. (2016) states that their study has
the limitations of only addressing three major categories from Barrett’s taxonomy of reading
comprehension. This is due to the fact that only these reading levels or categories are used for
teaching reading comprehension, whereas the rest, namely evaluation and appreciation in
Malaysian English language syllabus are used for teaching literature.

Unfortunately, some research findings (Sunggingwati, 2001; Wulandari, 2003; Aryati, 2007)
show that high percentage of questions in the English course books deal with literal comprehension –
the lowest level of comprehension. The last but not the least, the fact that using different types and
levels of comprehension questions can promote students’ reading ability (Tjahjaning, 1991) suggests
that it is important for the English teachers to have good competence in developing reading
comprehension questions by using various type and level of comprehension.

Muayanah (2014) reports that comprehension questions developed by senior high school
teachers in Surabaya is still dominated by literal or the lowest level of comprehension based on
Barrett’s taxonomy. She argues that the questions in students’ book should involve various types
of comprehension questions in which there is a balance between literal and higher levels of
comprehension questions. Similar findings are also reported by Gocer (2014) in his study on
evaluating Turkish reading examination questions based on Barrett’s taxonomy. Many questions
only focus on literal comprehension level, so there are inadequate questions referring to
reorganization, inferential, and evaluation level. It is recommended that teachers should give
equal distribution of comprehension questions using Barrett’s taxonomy. Further, he puts
forward a suggestion to the Ministry of National Education to make a new arrangement to revise
the framework of questions and acquisitions for all grades. Therefore, it is imperative that in-
service training for teachers must be prepared in the pedagogical measurement-assessment field.
Collamar et al. (2017) in their study on student-generated questions recommend that the school
offers a seminar to teachers in all subject areas on Barrett’s reading comprehension levels. By
understanding the levels of reading comprehension, teachers are expected to be able to utilize
student-generated questions to help them enhance their competence in asking questions as well
as to check their understanding of the reading texts. Freedom of generating questions before,
during, and after the reading selections trigger comprehension.

Prospect Passages:

1. Once upon a time there was a great city named Troy. It was surrounded by high walls and its
gates were very strong. The people of Troy were called Trojans. They were at war with the
Greeks. The Greek army had been trying to conquer the city of Troy for many years. They
were not able to because they could not find a way to enter the city. One morning the
Trojans woke up and saw that the Greeks had given up and left. The only thing they saw
outside the city gates was a huge wooden horse statue. It was a gift from the Greek army. So
the Trojans brought the wooden horse statue inside their city and they held a feast to
celebrate their victory. That night after the merrymaking, as the Trojans slept, a secret door
from the wooden horse opened and out carne a group of Greek soldiers. The Greek soldiers
tiptoed to the gates of the city and opened them. The Greek army, which had pretended to
sail away, returned in the night and entered the city whose gates were now open. The Greek
army defeated the Trojans.
2. There is a story in Philippine folklore about a mango tree and a bamboo tree.
Not being able to get as to which was the stronger of the two, they called
upon the wind to make the decision. The wind blew its hardest. The mango
tree stood fast. It would not yield. It knew it was strong and sturdy. It would
 not sway. It was too sure of itself. But finally, its roots gave way, and it
tumbled down. The bamboo tree was wiser. It knew it was not as robust as
the mango tree. And so every time the wind blew, it bent its head gracefully. It
made loud protestations, but it let the wind have its way. When finally the
wind got tired blowing, the bamboo tree stood in all its beauty and race. The
Filipino is like the bamboo tree. He knows that he is not strong enough to
resist the vigorous attack of superior forces. So he yields and has survived.
This means that the Filipino would accept any kind of life that God would
present to him. For this reason, he is contented, happy and at peace. To him,
as to that oriental poet,” the past is already a dream, and tomorrow is only a
vision; but today, well – lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.” The Filipino is very resilient, he has the
ability to recover from any obstacle that comes his way. Man – made or
natural forces, he emerges triumphantly. He never gives up, no matter how
hard life was before and even now… the FILIPINO remains to be PLIANT like
the Bamboo.
Summary Link: Free Essay: Pliant Like The Bamboo Copy (studymode.com)

Links useful for Questionnaire making:

BARRETT TAXONOMY - educational taxonomy (weebly.com)
barrett.pdf

Academic Performance and Reading Comprehension

Educational systems rely more heavily upon text as students reach higher grade levels. In early
elementary grades, students do not typically have textbooks at home and they primarily work with
decodable readers and short stories borrowed from the library. However, beginning around third grade,
textbooks are introduced to the home environment and students’ abilities to pull and process
information from textbooks becomes increasingly necessary for student achievement. By the time
students reach high school, many teachers expect students to build their background knowledge by
reading at home and then demonstrate their understanding during in-class discussions (Harlaar, N.,
Thompson, L., Deater-Deckard, K., DeThorne, L., & Petrill, S., 2011). The textbooks that students utilize in
science, math, and history are typically several hundred pages in length, featuring diagrams, pictures,
and, primarily, text to transmit knowledge about the subject to the reader.
Additionally, the battery of standardized tests that students take to demonstrate competence in each of
the tested subject areas, such as language arts, math, science, and social studies, requires them to be
able to read at increasingly higher levels (Crane, Huang, Derby, Makkonen, & Goel, 2008). Researchers
have over time conducted research on reading comprehension and academic performance in Kenya and
across the world to find out the role of language in academic performance in different subjects.
Cummins (1979) in studies of language skills of bilinguals concluded that a certain level of linguistic
proficiency seemed to be necessary for academic achievement because language competence allows
one to use it as an organizer of knowledge and as a tool for reasoning.
As Cummin

Reading has also been described as the “desire to engage and understand [one's] world [...], a need to
know” (Goff & Ackerman, 1992, p. 539), which seems best expressed by contemplation. Intellectual
curiosity has been labeled as the “third pillar of academic performance” besides intelligence and effort
(von Stumm et al., 2011, p. 574).