Since prior knowledge is positively linked with reading comprehension, methods of measuring prior knowledge are important. A word association test is a useful technique for evaluating topic familiarity and enables the teacher to make decisions about how much additional information is needed for students to process a text successfully. (SRT)

Presents a teaching strategy which uses points of reference (or basic underlying concepts) to help students understand definitions, descriptions, and comparisons/contrasts, and models its use. Notes that understanding the importance of points of reference is one of the first steps in the technique called "knowledge modeling." (SR)

Describes how prior knowledge, current text, future text, and prior text all play a part in knowledge acquisition. States that most content area reading instruction emphasizes only current text. Notes that future columns will address this issue by introducing a method for teaching comprehension of exposition called "knowledge modeling." (SR)

Describes some recent studies which establish that meaningful learning can be promoted by a certain type of questioning activity, called elaborative interrogation, that leads students to activate prior knowledge and tie it to the new information. (SR)

Explores research on the efficacy of previewing before reading to build background knowledge. Offers guidelines for presenting a preview to students. (HTH)

Describes 10 categories of inferences and proposes a three-step procedure for teaching students to make inferences while reading. (HOD)

Argues that readability formulas accurately predict how easily a passage will be understood by considering sentence length and word difficulty. Claims that the misuse of readability formulas as writing guides is responsible for much of the criticism. Challenges the critics to come up with something better. (RS)

Argues that when students in Third World nations use foreign materials and encounter a culture-concept gap, their teachers need coping mechanisms that help build up the students' store of background knowledge. (FL)

Proposes four guidelines to help educators evaluate vocabulary instruction: (1) instruction should help students relate new vocabulary to their background knowledge, (2) instruction should help students develop elaborated word knowledge, (3) instruction should provide for active student involvement, and (4) instruction should develop students'…

Describes a metacognitive approach to improving vocabulary. The method trains students to establish a network of relationships among words and relate the words to personal experiences. (HOD)

Reports on a study that examined whether students' comprehension and recall of an expository passage would improve if they were given information about the organization of the passage before they read it. (HOD)

Explains semantic feature analysis, a technique that helps students learn a new vocabulary by seeing how words are alike and how they are different. (HOD)

Summarizes good reading research published in journals during 1986, focusing on studies that deal with reading comprehension, prior learning, and word recognition. (SRT)

Discusses what is meant by meaningful learning, the conditions necessary for meaningful learning to occur, the importance of vocabulary instruction to comprehension, and how to insure that vocabulary instruction is meaningful. (HOD)

Describes a procedure termed free associational assessment that uses free recall and associational thinking. A sample lesson is provided. (HOD)