Language and Literacy Corner

The Underappreciated Powerhouse to Reading Comprehension: Background Knowledge

Often when people think about reading, conversation centers around phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, and vocabulary. Sometimes strategies designed to boost comprehension, such as learning to summarize or make a graphic representation of a text, are discussed. However, there is strong evidence showing that an important factor in comprehension isn’t mastering strategies as isolated units/topics: it’s how much knowledge a reader has of the topic and using text to teach strategies.

There exists a misconception that students need to learn to read before they can read to learn, or before they can acquire knowledge of the world through independent reading. World or background knowledge is key to reading comprehension and development. Omitting subjects such as history, science, and the arts takes away opportunities to gain world knowledge, which is part of learning to read or learning to understand what you read. Children need to begin to develop their knowledge from the world as babies and continue to build that knowledge through adulthood.

Check out these links for additional information:
https://iowareadingresearch.org/
https://bit.ly/1i52A0b
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/building-background-knowledge