ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the processes involved in comprehending clauses, sentences, and text. Language comprehension is the higher-level units of decoding. While a clause or sentence is being decoded its surface structure needs to be held in mind. Psychologists have for a long time studied something called 'short-term memory'. The classic demonstration of short-term memory involves asking someone to repeat a series of random digits they have just heard. Normally they can manage something in the order of seven before accuracy begins to fall off. The relationship between language and memory indicates the powerful effect that literacy has on people's attitude to language and text. Human language comprehension and memory are the products of complex, but subtle and flexible, cognitive processes which we all possess, but which are only beginning to understand.
