Activating Background Knowledge in Reading Comprehension Assessment

Abstract

THIS STUDY was an investigation of readers' activation of background knowledge in response to prepassage purpose questions selected from the reading comprehension section of the research edition of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests (1985). A total of 74 students from Grades 1, 6, and 10 were shown three purpose questions from appropriate levels of the MAT and asked to make predictions about the content of related passages. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed for the relationship of the responses to the content of the purpose questions and for the extent of schema elaboration. Students at all grade levels produced responses that were related to the information in the purpose question or to unstated story schema categories. At Grades 6 and 10, patterns of schema elaboration were found to be significantly related to the purpose questions used, whereas Grade 1 students maintained a similar pattern across all purpose questions. The results indicate that a broad age range of students can use purpose questions as cues to activate background knowledge, but that all purpose questions are not equally effective in performing this cuing function. Topic familiarity, amount of information presented, and the presence of genre clues are suggested as text features affecting schema activation.