Vocabulary is the most basic form of reading comprehension; readers need to understand words and what they mean in context. Literal comprehension is the next level of understanding -- the ability to understand what the text says directly. For example,“Three birds rested on an electrical wire” tells how many birds there were, what they were doing and where they were they doing it. The next level of comprehension is inference, going beyond what is literally stated; “The birds were tired” might be inferred from the fact that they were resting. The highest level of comprehension is analysis, wherein the reader may ask and answer questions about the validity of the author’s claims or the efficacy of the writing style. The "effect" of literal comprehension, then, is establishing the basis for more interpretive skills.
Theoretical perspectives on teaching reading comprehension include cognitive theory, social-cognitive theory, socio-cultural theory and dialogic theory. These perspectives are not necessarily antagonistic, but they emphasize different aspects of understanding how people learn to comprehend what they read. In a 2010 paper by Hsiao-Feng Tsai and Ian Wilkinson of Ohio State University, a comparison of these perspectives determined a common conclusion between them, namely that readers learn to comprehend through imitation of others and the subsequent internalization by practice of what they originally imitated. Imitation and practice can then be called the “causes” of literal comprehension.
The components of literal comprehension are context, facts and sequence. To comprehend a text literally, the reader has to integrate these three components, understanding context as the whole picture created by the relation between facts, facts as key information provided in the text and sequence as a process over time. These components combine in the reader's mind, creating comprehension or complete understanding of the reading.
Teachers can use a variety of strategies to help students understand what they read, but the most important effect in the teaching and learning process is that the student himself internalizes the strategies. For example, a teacher might begin with a reading handout of one paragraph, then have the students cut each sentence out separately, laying the sentence strips in sequence from top to bottom on the desk. Students then take one sentence at a time and discuss its meaning, finally discussing what the whole paragraph means. The student eventually learns to thoroughly understand one sentence at a time, without cutting them apart, while reading.