3 Types of Reading Comprehension Compared: Inferential, Literal, and Evaluative

Students who have built strong reading comprehension skills know how to apply their background knowledge, decoding, vocabulary, and critical thinking strategies to make meaning of a text beyond what’s on the page.

To reach that level of comprehension, they must develop foundational skills to help them make the shift from learning to read to reading to learn. Each of the science of reading pillars work together to ensure students understand and can derive meaning from what they read. 

They include:

• Phonemic awareness: The ability to identify different sounds that make up a word

• Phonics skills: The ability to match sounds to letters or groups of letters

• Fluency: The ability to read accurately and quickly

• Vocabulary: The ability to understand the meaning of words

• Comprehension: The ability to read a text and understand its overall meaning

Just as it’s critical for students to be explicitly taught phonics skills, they must also learn reading comprehension skills. Any gaps in reading comprehension can put them at academic risk in the upper grades. A recent study showed that students with higher reading comprehension skills generally showed better academic outcomes as they progressed from grade to grade. Conversely, those with poor reading comprehension struggled to understand more complex texts, leading to lower educational achievement and decreased motivation. These reading gaps can also persist into adulthood, further limiting students’ academic and career choices post-graduation. 

What Are the Main Types of Reading Comprehension?

Reading comprehension goes beyond making sense of the words in a text. It requires students to understand, interpret, and evaluate what the author is trying to say. In her landmark 1978–1979 classroom study, reading expert Dolores Durkin discovered teachers often assessed reading comprehension by asking questions about a text, but rarely taught students deeper reading comprehension skills. Her findings then focused on helping teachers explicitly teach comprehension strategies such as predicting, inferring, and summarizing.

Durkin describes three main levels or types of reading comprehension in Teaching Them To Read: literal, inferential, and evaluative.

• Literal comprehension focuses on understanding information as it is explicitly stated in a text, such as facts, details, and the sequence of events.

• Inferential comprehension asks students to read between the lines. They must use context clues and their own knowledge to make logical inferences, predict outcomes, or infer motives and meanings that aren’t explicitly stated in the text.

• Evaluative comprehension requires readers to think critically about the text as a whole. Students may find a hidden meaning or message, or be asked to form their own opinions or conclusions based on what they’ve read.

Together, these three levels of comprehension help readers move from understanding the words on the page to engaging with what they’ve read.

Literal Comprehension

Literal comprehension refers to understanding the facts, details, and ideas the author explicitly states in a text. At this comprehension level, students focus on what the text actually says rather than what it implies.

Because literal comprehension provides the foundation for inferential and evaluative thinking, students begin developing these skills in (grades K–2) and strengthen them in the upper-elementary grades (grades 3–4). They learn to recall facts, identify main characters and settings, and retell events in chronological order. As they build these skills, they learn to identify main ideas, summarize key details, and answer who, what, when, and where questions.

The National Reading Panel confirms explicit comprehension instruction in reading comprehension, supported by targeted questioning and critical discussion, significantly improves reading outcomes. In the classroom, teachers can assess literal comprehension through questions such as: “Who are the main characters,” “What happened first?” or “Where does the story take place?” By asking these questions, teachers can confirm students have grasped the text’s basic information before moving on to higher levels of understanding.

Teachers can also assess literal comprehension in these ways:

• Read short passages aloud and model how to find answers directly in the text.

• Model for students how to skim for the main idea and scan for specific information like names, dates, or numbers.

• Have students highlight or underline important words and phrases that answer literal questions. If using a digital platform, students can use built-in technology to mark answers directly in the text.

• Use graphic organizers such as story maps, sequencing charts, or main idea webs to help students organize information they find in the text.

Inferential Comprehension

Newer readers typically don’t realize authors expect them to read beyond what’s written to determine what is happening (and what might happen next). When students “read between the lines” to anticipate what comes ahead, for example, they are making inferences and drawing conclusions, or showing inferential comprehension. Strategic readers can draw conclusions supported by evidence from the text, or from their own experiences. 

Students usually begin developing inferential comprehension skills around grades 2–3, after mastering basic literal understanding. At this stage, they use context clues and prior knowledge to infer meaning, predict outcomes, or explain motives not stated in the text. These skills deepen in grades 4–5, when teachers begin to ask them to identify themes, relationships, and cause and effect. Using inferential comprehension, students can bridge their literal understanding of a text with higher-level critical thinking.

Teachers can help students learn to use clues from the text and background knowledge in these ways:

• Read a passage aloud and pause to explain how they’ve made inferences. For example, “The author didn’t say the girl was angry, but she’s stomping her feet—that tells me she must feel upset.” This helps students see how insightful readers combine text clues with what they already know.

• Practice by reading short passages. Ask students to infer cause, emotion, or motive. Example: “The wind started blowing and people ran into the basement. What’s happening?”

• Teachers can then move beyond “who” and “what” questions to “why” and “how.”  Ask: “Why do you think the character made that choice?” “How do you know the author wants you to feel a particular way about a character?” Encourage students to justify their answers with evidence from the text.

• Use graphic organizers such as T-charts or inference maps that show:

  • What the text says

  • What students already know

  • What students can infer

This visual framework helps students see how inferences are built from evidence:

• Provide paired examples to highlight the difference between literal and inferential comprehension. Discuss how one answer comes directly from the text, while the other requires reasoning.

  • Literal: “Where does the story take place?”

  • Inferential: “How does the setting change the decision a character ultimately makes?”

• Ask students to infer relationships, themes, or emotions based on limited information presented in poetry, fables, or short stories.

Evaluative Comprehension

Using their evaluative comprehension skills, students can analyze, critique, and form judgments about a text based on evidence and their own reasoning. Readers at this level go beyond inference and assess a text’s credibility, an author’s hidden message, or relevance based on their understanding of real-world issues.

Teachers can help students build evaluative comprehension beginning in the upper-elementary grades (grades 4–5), and reinforce these skills throughout middle and high school. At this comprehension level, students should be able to analyze and judge texts, identify an author’s purpose, bias, or argument, and support their opinions based on evidence.

To develop students’ ability to think critically and support their ideas with evidence, teachers can use these strategies:

• Ask students to take positions on issues or themes drawn from a text (for example, “Was the character’s motive justified?”). Require them to cite textual evidence to support their viewpoints.

• Teach students to distinguish between personal opinion and evidence-supported analysis. Reinforce that strong opinions are built on facts, examples, and quotes from the text.

• Help students connect ideas in a text to current events or real-world issues using prompts like, “What does the issue the characters are dealing with look like in today’s world?” 

Teaching Strategies for All 3 Types of Reading Comprehension

Effective literacy instruction helps students move from understanding basic facts to analyzing complex ideas. To support literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension, teachers must design lessons that explicitly and intentionally build each skill and integrate them across grade levels. 

• Teachers can reinforce literal comprehension by helping students understand and recall information directly from a text. Once students can identify key details and sequence events, they’re prepared to move beyond surface-level understanding. 

• Inferential comprehension develops next. Teachers should encourage students to interpret a text’s meaning, recognize cause-and-effect relationships in a story, and connect ideas that aren’t explicitly stated. 

• Finally, evaluative comprehension challenges students to analyze, critique, and form judgments about what they read. Teachers can help build these critical thinking skills by asking students to extend the text and apply it to real-world situations.

To maximize impact, educators can ask a mix of literal, inferential, and evaluative questions during read-alouds, small-group work, or independent reading. By blending these strategies consistently, teachers can strengthen learners’ comprehension skills.

Some students, particularly multilingual learners or those with learning differences, may have more difficulty connecting texts with background knowledge, and may need additional support to feel confident making inferences and conclusions. Through multi-tiered instruction, educators can differentiate support to meet students where they are. In early grades, teachers might guide students through shared reading and ask literal questions about characters or settings. As students advance, literacy lessons can introduce inferential tasks—such as predicting outcomes or interpreting themes. Eventually, teachers can help students master evaluative comprehension by asking them to compare authors’ perspectives or analyze arguments in essays. 

Lexia Helps Teachers Address Reading Comprehension

Digital tools like Lexia® LETRS® Professional Learning and Lexia Aspire® Professional Learning provide educators with research-based, targeted instructional resources to strengthen reading comprehension for students in grades pre-K–12, across all tiers. 

For example, LETRS helps teachers in grades pre-K–5 guide reading comprehension instruction by focusing on students’ foundational skills, background knowledge, and  text-based comprehension strategies. Unlike programs that teach general comprehension strategies in isolation, LETRS includes it as part of a science of reading-aligned instructional approach. Its comprehension module includes questioning strategies and sample activities that touch upon each of the three reading comprehension types. 

LETRS covers how:

• Vocabulary, background knowledge, and reading comprehension are connected.

• Syntax or sentence structure can affect students’ reading comprehension.

• Text organization in different genres affects comprehension.

• Teachers can mediate comprehension before, during, and after text reading.

One-third of eighth grade students read at below the basic level, according to The Nation’s Report Card (NAEP) results. That means these students likely could not identify basic literary elements in a text such as the order of events, character traits, or main idea. Aspire helps middle and high school educators address reading gaps in older students by equipping them with literacy instructional strategies that transfers to their content areas. In Aspire’s Reading and Writing Comprehension module, teachers learn more about the multifaceted relationships among reading, writing, and knowledge. They also learn how to:

• Develop an instructional plan that facilitates student writing of expository, argumentative, and narrative texts and essays.

• Promote reading comprehension of argumentative texts.

• Build awareness of language varieties to support students who speak non-mainstream varieties of English.

Strong reading comprehension empowers students to think critically across subject areas. By explicitly teaching all three levels of comprehension—literal, inferential, and evaluative—teachers can move students from understanding words to analyzing and applying complex ideas. 

Grounded in the science of reading, programs like LETRS and Aspire give teachers the research-based strategies and professional learning they need to strengthen comprehension at every grade level. 

Discover how Lexia’s science of reading solutions can support reading comprehension in your district.