Briefly describes how students use their prior knowledge of conventions in making inferences about literature. Outlines some techniques that could be employed in conducting descriptive research studies to determine what students do or do not know and how that difference affects their response to literature. (RL)

Considerable attention has been devoted in recent years to theories of text comprehension and recall that stress the importance of preexisting knowledge structures or schemata. While the valuable contribution such research has made to the understanding of the reading process and the various disabilities that often attend its acquisition must be…