THE CONTRIBUTION OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND COHERENT TEXT TO COMPREHENSION

THE AUTHORS provided students with relevant background knowledge and tested the effects of this knowledge on comprehension of two versions of a text. The two text versions were a sequence of four segments of text from a fifth-grade social studies textbook about the period leading to the American Revolution and revised versions of these segments designed to improve text coherence. Forty-eight fifth graders were presented with an instructional module designed to upgrade their background knowledge prior to reading one of the text versions. The results showed that students who read the revised text recalled significantly more material and answered significantly more questions correctly than students who read the original text. Further, qualitative analyses suggest specific influences of knowledge and coherent text. Finally, the discussion focuses on the importance of the teacher's role in mediating learning from social studies text.