ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the reader's role in comprehension— what the reader brings to the text and does before, during, and following the reading is crucial. It discusses the importance of background knowledge in terms of students' reading and learning in specific disciplines. The chapter discusses the type of comprehension requiring discourse knowledge, that knowledge of organization and connections that enables us to understand text beyond the single sentence level. Students who approach the comprehension of all genres and formats in the same way, on the other hand, can find themselves in trouble. Prior knowledge helps readers in a number of ways, including ease of comprehension. Paying attention to the problem–solution patterns in a text can aid comprehension; in fact, readers can predict the solutions to problems and read to confirm or disconfirm them. Teachers and researchers also note that comprehension instruction will not work if conducted without knowledge of the students involved.
