Relative Weakness in Verbal Reasoning (V–)

Research-based Principle

Guidelines for Adapting Instruction

Learner Characteristics

These students prefer nonverbal (visual) or quantitative reasoning and often find it difficult to translate their thoughts into words. Over time, this propensity causes a lag in their development of verbal abilities of all sorts, including the ability to reason with words. Verbal skills are so critically important for school learning, however, that these students must be encouraged to develop and use their speaking, reading, and listening abilities.

Students with this profile often have lower scores on achievement tests than would be expected on the basis of their median age stanine.

Students who exhibit relatively poor verbal skills often do so because they do not routinely participate in conversations that involve formal language structures or meaningful dialogues.

Relative Weakness

Indicators of a relative weakness in verbal reasoning include the following:

Activities that are unnecessarily verbal thwart the students’ performance even in areas in which they excel. Common sources of difficulty are directions that are overly long and tests that require the translation of verbal prompts or that require verbal responses.

Students with lower verbal scores (stanines 1–4) often find themselves overwhelmed in the classroom, especially when following directions for the first time or when attempting to transfer their attention between different verbal activities. For example, this situation can occur when students are required to view a rapidly paced video presentation and take notes at the same time.

Shoring Up the Weakness

The critical importance of verbal reasoning abilities for success in school requires that relatively more effort be expended improving these abilities than would be expended to improve a relative weakness in quantitative or, especially, nonverbal reasoning.

Suggestions for adapting instruction for these students include the following:

To improve performance and reduce frustration, reduce the demands placed on verbal working memory. For example:

Do not expect these students to keep in mind a verbal statement and apply it at the same time. Allow the student to use a prompt, such as a written statement of the concept or strategy needed for the work at hand. 

Offload monitoring to another student by having students work in pairs. 

Allow many opportunities to practice a new strategy in diverse contexts. 

Help students who scored at lower stanine levels to identify the conditions that cue possible use of a new reasoning strategy. Then try to arrange for such conditions to occur unpredictably. The goal is for students to learn to call up and use different procedures as circumstances demand and not rely on fixed strategies in all cases.

To improve students’ verbal reasoning abilities, provide exposure to individuals who model hoped-for styles of verbal discourse and verbal reasoning as well as opportunities to engage in conversations in which they practice these speech patterns. 

Offer a broad language curriculum that combines reading, writing, and speaking as well as opportunities to practice and receive feedback on each. Keep in mind that at all levels, language-related reasoning begins with the oral and external; only after much practice does a reasoning strategy become internalized and automatic. 

Acquaint students with unfamiliar ways of conversing and writing by providing opportunities to imitate the speaking and writing styles of individuals they admire. Drama, poetry, and storytelling are particularly useful in this regard. After students practice the language forms and syntactic structures orally, they can more readily apply them in written essays and stories. 

Provide reading assignments and follow-up discussions or activities designed to build verbal comprehension.