Prior Knowledge and Prediction in Reading

In order to understand how reading works and what reading is, it is necessary to look carefully at what readers try to do when they read. Many teachers have noticed that when pupils are confused by the meaning of a word or phrase, they will make a guess at it, sometimes to themselves, or publicly if reading orally. On what are these guesses based? Kenneth Goodman (1967), in his research on the nature and quality of children\u27s predictions about the meanings in their reading called reading a psycholinguistic guessing game . Prediction has become a more descriptive word than \u27guess\u27 about what the reader is doing, since he/she is making predictions on some rational basis. What is the nature of this rational basis for a reader\u27s predictions