Unfortunately, such incidental learning is filled with possible problems. The definitions learned range from richly contextualized and more than sufficient, to incomplete to wrong. Children do develop knowledge of vocabulary through incidental contact with new words they read. This is one of the many reasons to challenge students to read incessantly.
World Knowledge
There is considerable evidence that readers who possess prior knowledge about the topic of a reading often comprehend the reading better than classmates with no, or lower prior knowledge. Nevertheless, even when students have knowledge relevant to the information they are reading they do not always relate their world knowledge to the content of a text. Unless inferences are absolutely necessary to make sense of the content they are reading, students frequently don't make inferences based on prior knowledge. All the same, reading comprehension can be improved by developing students' prior knowledge. This is another reason to challenge students to read high-quality, information-rich texts.
When students read text containing new factual information, they do not necessarily relate that information to their prior knowledge even if they have a large reserve of knowledge that might be related at their disposal. Research shows that questioning techniques, such as asking students to explain something they read, or why something happened in the text, prompts them to access their prior knowledge and make sense of the content. These techniques produce a huge effect on retention of the information acquired in the texts.
Active Comprehension Strategies
Students who read well are extremely active as they read. Cordon and Day (1996) describe this phenomenon thusly, "Good readers are aware of why they are reading a text, gain an overview of the text before reading, make predictions about the upcoming text, read selectively based on their overview, associate ideas in text to what they already know, note whether their predictions and expectations about text content are being met, revise their prior knowledge when compelling new ideas conflicting with prior knowledge are encountered, figure out the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary based on context clues, underline and reread and make notes and paraphrase to remember important points, interpret the text, evaluate its quality, review important points as they conclude reading, and think about how ideas encountered in the text might be used in the future. Young and less skilled readers, in contrast, exhibit a lack of such activity."
Another trait of good readers is that they often form mental pictures, or images, as they read. There is value in guiding students to learn to form visual images of what they are reading, such as urging them to picture a setting, a character, or an event described in the text. Readers, especially younger readers, who visualize during reading understand and remember what they read better than readers who do not visualize.
Active reading can be stimulated by teaching students to use comprehension strategies. The following strategies are known to produce improved memory and comprehension of text in children: 1) generating questions about ideas in text while reading, 2) constructing mental images representing ideas in text, 3) summarizing, and 4) analyzing setting, characters, conflict, attempts at solution, successful resolution, and ending. Excellent readers do not employ these strategies one at a time, nor do they require the influence of strong instructional control. Teachers need to teach students to use these individual strategies simultaneously, employing them in a self-regulated fashion. These skills can be taught beginning with reciprocal teaching of the first strategy and continuing through more flexible approaches reinforced with extensive teacher explanation and modeling of individual strategies, followed by teacher-scaffold use of the strategies, and concluding with students employing self-regulated use of the strategies during regular reading.
Monitoring
Students who are successful readers are conscience of the times they need to exert more effort to make sense of a text. For instance, they know when to expend more effort decoding. These students are aware when they have sounded out a word but that word does not really make sense in the context. When that feeling occurs good readers will try rereading the word in question. It is sensible to teach young readers this skill. Current approaches to reading instruction incorporate a monitoring element, with readers taught to pay attention to whether the decoding makes sense and to try decoding again when the word as decoded fails to make sense in the given context.
Metacognition can be defined as thinking about thinking. Good readers use metacognitive...
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