ABSTRACT
The purposes of this chapter are: to explain how mental models are set up though the interaction of input from the text and readers' knowledge, to introduce the component processes that underpin the representation of text. A good reader derives an overall representation of the meaning of the text. Some authors have termed this representation a "mental model" or a "situation model" of the text. The chapter discusses in more detail how readers deal with different types of texts. A reader who is learning from text, in particular, also needs to compare what is in the text with what they already know, and may need to adjust their existing knowledge in the light of the text they have read. This skill is termed "comprehension monitoring" and is one of the skills needed for effective comprehension.
