Reading comprehension is the application of a skill that evolved for other purposes (listening or oral comprehension) to a new form of input (text). Unlike listening comprehension, reading comprehension is not something for which our brains have evolved. Whereas oral comprehension seems to develop “naturally” with minimal deliberate intervention, reading comprehension is more challenging and requires deliberate instruction. Humans have been doing oral comprehension for 100,000 years or more (Donald, 1991), and virtually all humans do it;reading comprehension has only been practiced for 5,000 years, and for most of that time most humans did not do it (Olson, 1994). It should not be surprising that it is difficult.