ABSTRACT
The purposes of this chapter are: to point out how the reader must make active contributions to the formation of a mental model of the text - by linking explicit information from the text with relevant knowledge, to help distinguish between different kinds of inferences, to detail how inferences build on vocabulary and prior knowledge and verbal working memory and to present an overview of well-documented ways in which inference making can be encouraged through teaching. The task of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is to reconstruct the motives and the events that led to the murder including who committed it. Holmes collects details and makes inferences to form the most likely coherent story. The chapter makes a distinction between two types of inference that are both of central importance to text comprehension. They differ in the demands on the reader, hence the distinction is relevant to assessment and teaching.
