This article explores the vital but often overlooked role of inferencing in early reading comprehension. While foundational decoding skills such as phonological awareness and fluency are essential, reading comprehension depends equally on children's ability to construct meaning beyond the words on the page. Drawing on the "Simple View of…

David Stephens, a 4th grade teacher in Washington State, was preparing a lesson plan about desert wildlife (all names are pseudonyms). He was planning on assigning his students the chapter book, "Desert Giant: The World of the Saguaro Cactus." The students had divergent knowledge about the topic. For example, Maryam had grown up in…

Theoretical models of word recognition suggest that knowing what a word means makes it easier to learn how to decode it. We tested this hypothesis with at-risk young students, a group that often responds poorly to conventional decoding instruction in which word meaning is not addressed systematically. A total of 53 first graders received explicit…

The purpose of this study was to examine how readers build orthographic knowledge for irregular words, defined as words that do not conform to conventional phonics rules and patterns. This study tests my theory that readers use phonological decoding, crosschecking and mental markings to read and spell unfamiliar irregular words. Forty-three…

Failure to "activate" relevant, existing background knowledge may be a cause of poor reading comprehension. This failure may cause particular problems with inferences that depend heavily on prior knowledge. Conversely, teaching how to use background knowledge in the context of gap-filling inferences could improve reading comprehension in…

This study examined a Pseudoword Phonics Curriculum to determine if this form of instruction would increase students' decoding skills compared to typical real-word phonics instruction. In typical phonics instruction, children learn to decode familiar words which allow them to draw on their prior knowledge of how to pronounce the word and may…

Research supports the need for active vocabulary learning across grade levels and subject areas to help increase readers' comprehension of diverse texts that they encounter. Given the increasing emphasis on decoding and reading comprehension, the relative importance of vocabulary instruction has been diminished in recent years. The authors argue…

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

This article discusses different approaches to reading instruction for EFL learners based on theoretical frameworks. The author starts with the bottom-up approach to reading instruction, and briefly explains phonics and behaviorist ideas that inform this instructional approach. The author then explains the top-down approach and the new cognitive…