Podcast Transcript
Sometimes, writers use words in such a way that their meaning is different from their usual meaning. For example, someone who has told a secret might say, “I spilled the beans.” This is an example of figurative language. These words do not mean that the person actually spilled some beans. These words mean “I didn’t mean to tell the secret.”
In the previous episode, we focused on the tenth reading strategy – Identifying Author’s Purpose.
This episode of the CARS & STARS Online podcast is about Interpreting Figurative Language, which is one of the higher-order reading strategies that underpins the higher levels of CARS & STARS Online.
But what are reading strategies, and why should you know about them?
Those elements that are most important for advanced reading comprehension, such as applying prior knowledge, building an extensive vocabulary, and developing critical-thinking capabilities, are skills that are learned and developed on an ongoing basis over time. They are essential in enabling students to engage in close textual analysis and deep, thoughtful reading comprehension across a range of texts and subject areas.
Comprehension can also be enhanced for many students through a set of specific, targeted strategies. Comprehension strategies are conscious plans, steps that many good readers can use to better make sense of texts, regardless of subject or genre. Comprehension strategies help students become purposeful, active readers that are in control of their own reading comprehension and able to think critically about text in any context.
CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading program designed to turn every student into a proficient and capable reader, with advanced levels of reading comprehension. The core reading strategies that underpin the entirety of the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program form an underlying instructional framework that recurs throughout every level and provides consistency of understanding and instruction for students and teachers alike.
The twelve reading strategies progress from simpler, lower-order thinking skills such as Finding the Main Idea and Recalling Facts and Details to more complex, higher-order concepts such as Identifying Author’s Purpose and Summarising. Initial questions determine students’ mastery of the text at a literal level, while later questions build on this understanding to get to the heart of their conceptual understanding. In this way, in every reading passage across every reading level, students are being asked to perform the same essential tasks – with their difficulty and complexity increasing as the student progresses through the reading levels.
These research-proven strategies, taken together, offer a complete recipe for increased student awareness of textual features and concepts, and provide a direct and understandable pathway to improving reading comprehension for every student.
And now, onto our main strategy for this episode: Interpreting Figurative Language!
Figurative language is a type of language that uses figures of speech rather than more literal language use to be more elaborate, effective or persuasive.
Figures of speech include elements such as metaphors, similes and allusions. These devices go beyond the literal meanings of the words – what is simply and directly said. Other devices and styles such as alliteration, imagery or onomatopoeia are figurative techniques that appeal directly to the senses of the reader.
Put simply, figurative language is any type of linguistic device that goes beyond the literal.
Reading figurative language requires a more developed level of reading comprehension because it involves a student not simply understanding what is directly stated but moving to thinking in a more abstract and complex way.
It’s fair to say that the ability to derive meaning from direct, literal language illustrates a type of lower-order thinking, whereas the ability to understand and interpret figurative language is evidence of a less conventional, higher-order thinking.
Figurative language is regularly employed in more advanced texts as readers get older. Understanding it is an important part of being able to appreciate adult novels and poetry, for example.
For this reason, the skill of being able to interpret figurative language is a vital one, and as such it makes up one of the twelve main reading strategies that underpin the CARS & STARS Online reading comprehension program.
Questions about Interpreting Figurative Language in the program ask students to engage with examples of language where words are used in a way that is different from their usual meaning.
Being able to interpret figurative language effectively is one of the crucial differences between simply reading because it is required and reading for deeper enjoyment, and so is an important step in developing an advanced and interested reader.
Here are some tips for using Interpreting Figurative Language in any text.
Look for things that are compared in the passage.
Look for words that have a meaning different from their usual meaning.
Think about the pictures that come to mind as you read the words.
Use what you have pictured to help you understand what the author means.
Now that we’ve talked about what this strategy is and how it works, let’s have a go at using Interpreting Figurative Language in a passage ourselves: and answering questions the way students do in CARS & STARS Online!
First, I’ll read the text. This text is a story about an unusual event.
Dana stared at the front of the Crispy-O’s box as she sleepily shovelled cereal into her mouth. On the front of the cereal box was a picture of a sunny, smiling girl with eyes that beamed like stars. Over her head, the smiling girl held the same box of Crispy-O’s. The girl on this box also held a box with the same picture on it. Dana stared at the cereal box harder and wondered how many pictures of the girl she would be able to count if she stared really, really hard.
“One, two, three,” Dana counted and then stopped. “Hey!” she exclaimed aloud. “This fourth girl is different. This girl is me!” Dana blinked her eyes and stared at the cereal box again. The fourth picture was not very clear, but Dana knew her own picture when she saw it! It was her school picture. She was wearing the brown jumper that her mother insisted “looked so nice”. “Something fishy is going on,” thought Dana.
In the story, the author compares the eyes of the girl on the cereal box to
a smile.
stars.
the sun
or: a shovel
The correct answer is: stars.
The answer is correct because the author uses a simile to describe the picture of the girl on the cereal box: she was a smiling girl “with eyes that beamed like stars”.
And you can tell that something fishy means:
“something suspicious”.
“something dangerous”.
“something disagreeable”.
or: “something familiar”.
The correct answer is: “something suspicious”.
This answer is correct because the details in the story suggest that something unusual is going on.
Interpreting Figurative Language is a very important reading strategy for all expert readers, and so features in every level of the CARS & STARS Online program from B to H.
Every parent and teacher knows it, but now research has confirmed it. Reading aloud has benefits for children that go beyond getting them to sleep, and in fact can be particularly helpful for those with learning differences or who are otherwise struggling with reading comprehension.
At least initially, children acquire new vocabulary largely through listening. Reading aloud lets them to hear new words in new contexts and get familiar with them before encountering them on the page. It also builds a closer relationship in their minds between spoken and written language, serving to make text less threatening. Reading aloud also serves to increase students’ attention span and make them more comfortable with the thinking skills required to make meaning from text.
This is why Read Aloud, a feature of CARS & STARS Online, can revolutionise understanding. Instead of reading the text directly themselves, students listen to the program read it for them. This option can be switched on for students who prefer to listen to content instead of reading it directly, allowing textual decoding to occur regardless of basic literacy level.
This feature is particularly helpful for those with dyslexia or other learning differences, but can be of benefit to any student. The Read Aloud feature increases word exposure and improves vocabulary by exposing students to words they may not be able to read themselves as text yet, but which they still understand when delivered verbally.
Discovering words in this way also helps develop higher-order thinking skills, because students engage with text at a more abstract level initially and by default, being exposed directly to the concepts and not having to decode them themselves – essentially overcoming many obstacles of a lower-order thinking style while progressing straight to higher levels of understanding, a real boon for their confidence.
Read Aloud allows children who would normally be daunted by a text to engage with it before they even realise that they are. That’s a real boon to reading instruction, and just one more reason why CARS & STARS Online is a reading comprehension program like no other.
If you are interested in learning more about the CARS & STARS Online subscriptions and how they can help children to achieve better results, then sign up for a free trial to be an integral part of your child’s reading success.
If you have missed out our previous episode, please click here. The next episode will be focused on the twelfth reading strategy – Summarising.
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See you in the next episode, and thanks for listening!
