by Robert Pondiscio, March 2nd, 2011

One of the principal arguments for a coherent, content-rich curriculum is that background knowledge — knowing something about the topic you’re reading about – compensates for weak reading ability.

But how great is the effect?  A tantalizing article by…reading researcher Tom Sticht on EdNews.org suggests that in adult readers background knowledge can close a gap of five grade levels of general reading ability.

If you want to test what someone knows about a subject, Sticht writes, “you might give them a simple multiple choice test in a written format, and then ask questions about the subject matter of interest.”  However this “confounds the assessment of the person’s knowledge about the subject with their ability to read.”  In other words, it’s difficult to tell whether a person taking a reading test doesn’t know the meaning of a word, for example, can’t decode a word, or lacks the background knowledge of the subject needed for adequate comprehension.   As Sticht puts it, we risk confusing ignorance with illiteracy.  “Generally there is no attempt to separately determine a student’s knowledge in the content area separately from the person’s ability to read in the content area in an unskilled or skilled manner,” Sticht observes.  Click link to read more:

via Knowledge Compensates for Five Years of Reading Ability « The Core Knowledge Blog.