Thoughts on comprehension

While writing my paper on Comprehension and eBooks recently I was reminded of the importance of being conscious of the fact that comprehension occurs at three levels, not just one. I came across an article that gave a very good description of the three levels. Scott Marfilius and Kelly Fonner in a 2007 paper described the three levels as the online, between the line and beyond the line levels. They provided very simple descriptions of the literal (online), inferential (between the lines) and evaluative (beyond the lines) levels of Comprehension.These titles should be useful for teacher educators and student teachers as they make these categories of comprehension skills easy to learn and recall. They also reinforce the point that comprehension must take place at all three levels for it to be effective. As teachers therefore we must be careful to provide our students with activiities which will help them to develop the skills at all three levels.