What Is Conflict
Conflict is the central problem or struggle that drives a story forward. It's what the main character must face, overcome, or navigate to reach the end of the narrative.
For struggling readers, understanding conflict is essential because it anchors comprehension. Without identifying what problem the character faces, readers often miss the entire purpose of the story. This matters especially for students with dyslexia or processing delays, who may already work harder to decode text. If they don't grasp why events are happening, their comprehension effort becomes wasted cognitive load.
Why It Matters
Conflict gives stories structure and meaning. When a reader can name and track the conflict, they have a framework for understanding what happens next. This directly improves reading comprehension and retention.
Research shows that explicit instruction in story structure, including conflict identification, improves comprehension outcomes for struggling readers by 20-30 percent. For students on IEPs, adding conflict analysis to reading goals helps teachers measure progress objectively. Instead of vague targets like "improve comprehension," teachers can assess whether a student can identify the main problem in a story by the end of a lesson or week.
The Orton-Gillingham approach emphasizes structured, multi-sensory reading instruction that builds from phonics up through fluency and comprehension. Understanding conflict is part of that comprehension tier. Students first decode words (phonics level), then read sentences fluently (reading level), then understand why those sentences matter (comprehension). Conflict is where meaning lives.
Types of Conflict
- Person vs. Person: Character fights another character. Example: a student standing up to a bully.
- Person vs. Self: Character struggles internally. Example: overcoming fear or self-doubt.
- Person vs. Environment: Character battles nature or circumstances. Example: surviving a storm or poverty.
- Person vs. Society: Character opposes rules, laws, or social expectations. Example: challenging unfair rules.
Teaching Conflict to Struggling Readers
Start concrete, then build abstraction. Struggling readers often need explicit, step-by-step guidance rather than discovery learning.
- Ask directly: "What problem does the character have?" Early in reading, phrase questions this simply.
- Use visual supports: Have students draw the problem, the character, or both. This bypasses decoding strain and builds mental models.
- Connect to phonics instruction: If you're teaching a student at a specific reading level, choose texts at that level with clear, single conflicts. A 2nd-grade reader working at a 1st-grade level needs stories where one problem is obvious, not layered conflicts.
- Link to IEP goals: If comprehension is a target, add "student identifies the main conflict in grade-level texts with 80% accuracy" as a measurable objective. Track this weekly.
Common Questions
- How do I know if my child understands conflict? Ask them to tell you the main problem in the story in their own words. If they can say "the character wanted X but Y got in the way," they understand conflict. They don't need fancy terminology at first.
- Does conflict work the same in picture books and chapter books? Yes. A picture book conflict is simpler and more visual, but the structure is identical. Starting with picture books helps younger or lower-level readers see conflict clearly before moving to longer texts.
- Should I teach conflict before or after phonics? Phonics comes first so students can decode. Then reading fluency. Then comprehension strategies including conflict analysis. Don't ask a student struggling with decoding to simultaneously analyze theme. Build in order.
Related Concepts
- Plot - The sequence of events that unfolds from the conflict toward resolution.
- Resolution - How the conflict ends or gets solved.
- Story Elements - The broader set of components that make up a narrative, including character, setting, and conflict.