What is the Role of Background Knowledge in Comprehension?

“Research demonstrates that, for comprehension, relevant knowledge is even more important than general reading ability. When high- and low-knowledge groups are divided into good and poor readers, those with little knowledge relevant to the text at hand perform relatively poorly, regardless of how well they read in general. In contrast — and this is important — the performance of the poor readers with higher background knowledge is generally better than that of the good readers with less background knowledge, and nearly as good as the good readers with lots of background knowledge.”

--Marilyn Jager Adams, Knowledge for Literacy

In 1987, two researchers from Wisconsin conducted an experiment about reading and baseball. Sixty-four students were given a story that narrated half an inning of baseball, and they were asked to read the text and demonstrate the action they were reading about on a model. Watch this short video about what the researcher learned about the importance of background knowledge to comprehension.

As you saw in the video, background knowledge may play a stronger role in comprehension than the skills a reader has. Prior knowledge is something that new knowledge can be connected to, like hanging a new picture on a wall with a nail. Without the nail, the picture falls to the floor. Background knowledge helps us to predict content, make inferences, interpret language, and recognize the way ideas are organized. As text becomes more complex, the demands on background knowledge grow as well, and students will have more instances where they will need to draw on previously learned content to create intertextual connections. In addition, as we increasingly focus on informational text in the College & Career Readiness Standards those texts are often more dense in vocabulary and the concepts presented. Effective readers tap into their knowledge, not only into their skills.

Effective readers not only have background knowledge on many topics, but they also have background knowledge of different genres of text--including text features and other characteristics of a particular genre--as well as language structures to help them comprehend the text they are reading. As educators, we want to provide ALL students access to the text (think of our mixed-level/mixed-learner classrooms). However, when determining how to build or activate background knowledge in a lesson, remember this: the majority of instruction should focus on students working with the text itself to unlock meaning.

The question is not if we should be preteaching background knowledge but HOW MUCH background knowledge do we provide and what kinds? When should we ACTIVATE prior knowledge and when should we provide background knowledge?

Consider the following when deciding between ACTIVATING and PROVIDING background knowledge:

The blog post "Reading Instruction for Multilingual Learners: The Role of Background Knowledge" contains important ideas and examples of how to determine what background knowledge learners need and ways to teach it.

Click "Next" to learn about how essential comprehension is to the work of the CCRS.