Factors Affecting Poor Reading Comprehension of College Students
Connections for Comprehension?
Prior-Knowledge Activation
Prior-Knowledge Activation
T
ext
A
ccording to the study
From Kindergarten Through
Third Grade: Children’s
Beginning School
Experiences
(2004) only twenty-nine percent of all third-grade children surveyed in the longitudinal study were able to make interpretations beyond what was stated in text.
Improved Comprehension
Connections
Genre/Text Features
V
ocabulary
Themes/Topics
T ext-to-Text T ext-to-Self T ext-to-World Reader
5
R esearch Paper:
Connections for Comprehension
With the goal of improving students’ reading comprehension,
Connections for Comprehension activates the following research- based connections as comprehension-building tools: genres and text features, as well as vocabulary, content, text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections.
What Is Prior Knowledge and How Does It Work?
Prior-knowledge activation is the catalyst that makes these comprehension connections occur. It is a strategy that proficient readers use to help their interactions with texts become memorable and relevant. “Prior knowledge affects comprehension by creating expectations about the content, thus directing attention to relevant parts, enabling the reader to infer and elaborate what is being read, to fill in missing or incomplete information in the text, and to use existing mental structures to construct memory representations that facilitate later use, recall, and reconstructions of text” (NICHD, 2000, p. 4-84).
R
esearchers Pearson, Roehler, Dole, and Duffy
(1992) summarize what research has found about prior-knowledge activation (p. 155).
1. Students with greater prior knowledge comprehend and remember more.
2. Merely having prior knowledge is not enough to improve comprehension; the knowledge must be activated, implying a strong metacognitive dimension to its use.
3. Young readers and poor readers often do not activate their prior knowledge.
4.
Prior-Knowledge Activation
Prior-Knowledge Activation
T
ext
A
ccording to the study
From Kindergarten Through
Third Grade: Children’s
Beginning School
Experiences
(2004) only twenty-nine percent of all third-grade children surveyed in the longitudinal study were able to make interpretations beyond what was stated in text.
Improved Comprehension
Connections
Genre/Text Features
V
ocabulary
Themes/Topics
T ext-to-Text T ext-to-Self T ext-to-World Reader
5
R esearch Paper:
Connections for Comprehension
With the goal of improving students’ reading comprehension,
Connections for Comprehension activates the following research- based connections as comprehension-building tools: genres and text features, as well as vocabulary, content, text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections.
What Is Prior Knowledge and How Does It Work?
Prior-knowledge activation is the catalyst that makes these comprehension connections occur. It is a strategy that proficient readers use to help their interactions with texts become memorable and relevant. “Prior knowledge affects comprehension by creating expectations about the content, thus directing attention to relevant parts, enabling the reader to infer and elaborate what is being read, to fill in missing or incomplete information in the text, and to use existing mental structures to construct memory representations that facilitate later use, recall, and reconstructions of text” (NICHD, 2000, p. 4-84).
R
esearchers Pearson, Roehler, Dole, and Duffy
(1992) summarize what research has found about prior-knowledge activation (p. 155).
1. Students with greater prior knowledge comprehend and remember more.
2. Merely having prior knowledge is not enough to improve comprehension; the knowledge must be activated, implying a strong metacognitive dimension to its use.
3. Young readers and poor readers often do not activate their prior knowledge.
4.