Here's a Way to Support Reading Comprehension Goals in Speech-Language Therapy: Complex Sentences
- StoryWhys
- May 3
- 4 min read
As language specialists, we can often see the language-based causes behind kids who are struggling to comprehend what they read. This is part 4 of a 4-part series on how we can support our students' reading comprehension goals.
Which school subject would you guess has the most complex sentences in its required reading?
It's science! Surprised?
In a research note published by Maura Curran in 2020, Curran explains how current elementary science curricula require students to read texts and generate explanations and descriptions that contain complex sentence structures. These sophisticated grammatical demands start as early as the first grade.
(For a quick refresher on what a complex sentence is, check out A Quick Guide to Clauses for SLPs on the free downloads page.)
In fact, by the time a student reaches the third grade, nearly one-third of the sentences in their science readings are complex.
Why is this significant? As SLPs working with elementary-aged students, we already know that kids with developmental language disorder (DLD) have a more difficult time processing and understanding complex sentence structures. If you'd like to read more about this and about the role working memory plays, check out this article by Montgomery & Evans from 2009. Be advised that they refer to DLD as SLI -- specific language impairment -- but, since then, our field has settled on the term DLD. For more on this, as well as 6 important things every SLP should know about DLD, see this post.
So, back to reading comprehension. Let's take this 5th-grade science passage from the fabulous website ReadWorks, which is a non-profit organization that provides free resources. It's a passage about where the sun gets its energy:
"Every 1.5 millionths of a second, the sun releases more energy than all humans consume in an entire year. Without the sun there would be no light, no warmth, and no life. Its heat influences the environments of all the planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in our solar system. How does a big ball of hydrogen create all that heat? The short answer is that it is big. If it were smaller, it would be just a sphere of hydrogen, like Jupiter. But the sun is much bigger than Jupiter. It would take 1,000 Jupiters to fill it up! That’s a lot of hydrogen. That means it’s held together by a whole lot of gravity. And THAT means there is a whole lot of pressure inside of it. In fact, the pressure is so intense, and the density so great, that the hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they literally meld into a new element—helium. This process—called nuclear fusion—releases energy while creating a chain reaction that allows it to occur over and over and over again. That energy builds up. It gets as hot as 27 million degrees Fahrenheit in the sun’s core. The energy travels outward through a large area called the convective zone. Then it travels onward to the photosphere, where it emits heat, charged particles, and light. That heat powers the chemical reactions that make life possible on Earth, allows gases and liquids to exist on many planets and moons, and causes icy comets to form fiery halos. Those particles create a ‘solar wind’ that pushes against the fabric of interstellar space billions of miles away. And that light travels far out into the cosmos—just one star among billions and billions. Not too bad for a big ball of gas, no?"
True to Curran's assertion, there are many complex sentences in this passage. I copied and pasted it into ChatGPT, asking it to show me the complex sentences (sometimes I still doubt my own ability to correctly identify every single complex sentence and wanted to be sure I got it right for this post 😬). It quickly told me that there are 21 sentences in this passage, and it identified 10 complex sentences!
If I were working with a student with DLD in speech-language therapy with reading comprehension goals, I would be sure to provide additional comprehension supports around these sentences. I'd also make sure the classroom teacher knows why this type of passage is especially difficult for my student in particular.
For More Ways to Support Reading Comprehension Goals in Speech-Language Therapy, See the Other Posts in this Series:
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