What is context?

Sometimes context has been conceptualized rather narrowly, as the words surrounding a particular word in question, within a sentence or phrase. In the last three decades, though, it has become increasingly evident that context means many things—even the context relevant to reading just an individual word. Context includes the grammar of sentences and the meanings of words; a paragraph; a whole story or other text. Context is also taken to include the reader's expectations and purposes for reading; various aspects of the location and situation in which the person is reading; and even the person's culture and times—in short, the reader's entire background of knowledge and experience (e.g. Brown, 1997). These various factors operate simultaneously for proficient readers; they usually operate quite unconsciously; and they can affect the identification of single words as well as the reader's understanding of an entire text. The automatic use of context—of multiple contexts—is a crucial part of the reading process, though most people don't realize it.

Considering and reconsidering arguments against the use of context

Recently it has been claimed, particularly in popularizations and simplifications of research, that proficient readers do not use context in reading. While virtually all scholars agree that a simple statement like this is a vast oversimplification, here are five points that are typically made in denying the use of context, with comments and contrary research:

• First is the simple observation that emergent readers who have been encouraged to rely mainly on context to "get" words (context such as the use of picture cues) do not always attend sufficiently to the print (Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986; Stanovich, 1991). This claim may sometimes be made by those who do not understand that reading is a matter of making meaning first and foremost, and that the most proficient readers—including emergent readers—will commonly make some departures from the exact words of the text, while maintaining grammar and meaning (e.g. K. Goodman, 1973). It is important that adults understand this and not mislabel good readers as poor readers. But for children who really don't attend sufficiently to the print itself, assistance can and should be provided.

• Some scholars think eye research studies demonstrate that readers do not use context to identify words in reading, because readers appear to focus on a majority of the words (at least the most meaning-carrying words), and even to identify the separate letters within words (Adams, Treiman, & Pressley, 1997, referring to studies such as those by Just & Carpenter, 1980; Ehrlich & Rayner, 1981; McConkie & Zola, 1981; Rayner & Morris, 1992). However, this eye fixation research has typically been conducted under conditions that vary substantially from normal reading—conditions likely to encourage more complete focusing on individual words and letters than what readers would normally do (Krashen, in press). Therefore, the relevance of eye fixation research to understanding the role of context in reading is dubious, at best.

Furthermore, there is substantial evidence that proficient readers identify familiar words faster than and apparently before they identify individual letters. Proficient readers draw upon some of the visual information in the letters to identify the word, and then perceive individual letters as letters (though this "perception" may be an after-the-fact reconstruction by the brain, which "knows" the word and its letter components). We can simulate this process by whiting out parts of the letters in a coherent sentence. If the content and vocabulary are reasonably predictable in the context, a proficient reader can usually read the sentence or phrase. Individual words are often readable, too, when a lot of their visual information has been omitted.

Most of the evidence is indirect, showing (1) that whole words can be read as fast or faster than their individual letters (F. Smith, 1994; see Smith, 1973, p. 56, and 1975, p. 58; Huey, 1908/1968); (2) that all but the least experienced readers will read real words and also strings of letters that reflect the letter/patterns in real words, faster than strings of unrelated letters that don't resemble English (McCaughey, Joula, Schadler, & Ward, 1980; Lefton & Spragins, 1974; Miller, Bruner, & Postman, 1954); (3) and that readers can read words under conditions that do not permit the identification of single letters, such as too great a distance or insufficient light (Erdmann & Dodge, 1898, as reported in Huey, 1908/1968 and in Smith, 1994; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989); and (4) that we do not typically recode printed words to speech before accessing their meanings (Banks & Shugarman, 1981), and indeed, some sense of the meaning of a word can be perceived when a person isn't even aware of having seen the word at all, much less its individual letters (Marcel & Patterson, 1987).

• Another point made is that emergent and less proficient readers need to use context to help identify (to name, or "say") the printed word more often than more proficient readers do (e.g. Nicholson, 1991; Schwantes, Boesl, & Ritz, 1980; various sources cited in Stanovich, 1991, and Share & Stanovich, 1995). Typically, more proficient readers can read more words in isolation, and read them faster. Good readers may even identify more words in isolation than in context (Nicholson, 1991), because they are concentrating just on identifying words, not on getting meaning.

Paradoxically, however, this does not mean that less proficient readers make more use of context than more proficient readers as they read; it only means that emergent and other less proficient readers need to draw upon context more if the goal is to precisely identify words that they don't already know in print (see next section below).

• Still another argument is that context is not very helpful in identifying words. Certainly this is true if (1) the words are of low-frequency in normal texts; (2) the context is not very supportive or suggestive; (3) the word is not already in the reader's speaking vocabulary; or some combination of factors such as these (e.g. Baldwin & Schatz, 1985, Schatz & Baldwin, 1986; also, see Gough & Hillinger, 1980). However, if getting the approximate meaning of the word is the goal rather than necessarily identifying the exact word on the page, context can be quite helpful indeed (see next section below).

• Finally, another point is that when the kinds of texts adults usually read are used to assess the effect of context on their reading of words, the words in context are read only a few milliseconds faster than the words in isolation (summarized and referenced in Stanovich, 1991, p. 432; see, for instance, McConkie & Zola, 1981). But this can be taken as evidence that, in fact, proficient readers do actually make use of context as they read, and that, for the most part, they do so automatically rather than consciously.

Various research studies, and differing kinds of research, indicate that context plays a major role in reading:

• First, proficient readers just naturally attend to context as they read; they do so automatically. This is demonstrated by various kinds of research (e.g. as summarized by Smith, 1994), but particularly the research that has analyzed the patterns of readers' miscues. In the 1960s, Ken Goodman chose the term "miscue" to designate observed reading responses that differed from what was expected—from what seemed to be "on the page," as it were (K. Goodman, 1965). Various important inferences about the nature of reading have been drawn from the substantial body of research that has followed (K. Goodman, 1973; Brown, Goodman, & Marek, 1996).

Critical to the initial research studies was a comparison of the ways in which the patterns of proficient readers' miscues differed from the patterns of not-so-proficient readers—the good and poor readers in the study, as previously determined by standardized tests. One of the key conclusions was that good readers are more sensitive to context. For one thing, their miscues, though relatively infrequent, more often fit with what came before in the sentence and text, suggesting that they were unconsciously predicting (and sometimes mispredicting) as they read. Even more noticeable, though, was the fact that proficient readers were much more likely to notice and try to correct the miscues that didn't fit with the context that followed the miscued word. Such monitoring and correction demonstrates that the reader was thinking about what was being read. Furthermore, the more proficient readers made more miscues on the little, so-called "sight words" than less proficient readers, because the good readers would predict words and even grammar that fit the context and didn't change the essential meaning. From such observations as these, we can reasonably infer that proficient readers automatically use context—all kinds of context—to predict ("think ahead"), and to try to correct when something doesn't sound right or isn't making sense. In other words, they use context to think about what they are reading. Furthermore, this is true even of first graders and kindergartners who can read simple but new texts independently (predictable or natural texts, not phonically regular "decodable" texts). The following examples from first graders (Weaver, 1994) are typical of the miscues that proficient readers make, both adults and children, particularly when they are reading aloud:

the Get a ball, Mary.	Everyone Everybody forgot to eat popcorn.
can ride Who rides with Mike?	went Carlo the clown ran up to Trixie.
but I can't play with Jeff and Mary. I can play ball.	let Bill the circus boy led Penny the elephant into the circus ring. [was corrected]

• To put it another way, automatically drawing upon various contexts is as integral to the reading process as automatically identifying a majority of the words. This is crucial for emergent and other non-proficient readers to learn and to practice, if they have not done so already: to read for meaning, to think ahead as they do so, and to use various "fix-it" strategies when something does not sound right or is not making sense.

• Proficient readers use context-based strategies (other than picture cues) more than less proficient readers, for the most part, though not necessarily for the precise identification of words. Proficient readers use such strategies to comprehend, but also to get at least an approximate meaning for individual words. For example, readers draw upon such contextual aids as prior knowledge and experience; direct definition or description, such as may be included in appositive constructions; parallel constructions; closely-related terms, synonyms; antonyms or other kinds of contrast; meaningful word elements; type style, such as boldface or italics; and other cues, such as the overall mood or tone of a text or paragraph (e.g. Dulin, 1969; Ames, 1966; Artley, 1943; McCullough, 1943). Various studies suggest that less proficient and/or less experienced readers generally make less effective use of context than more proficient readers (Goodman, 1965, 1973; Dulin's 1969 review of earlier studies; Weber, 1970; Gates, 1979; Hughes, 1977; Hudelson-Lopez, 1977; Wood, 1976).

• Nagy, Herman, & Anderson (1985) draw upon their research to conclude that "our results strongly suggest that a most effective way to produce large-scale vocabulary growth is through an activity that is all too often interrupted in the process of reading instruction: Reading." Why? Because, of course, various kinds of context facilitate the learning of vocabulary. These researchers point out that one's understanding of a word's meanings arises gradually, as it is encountered in more and more contexts. Although the probability of learning a word from just one exposure is quite low, given an average amount of reading, a child would learn about 800-1200 words a year reasonably well: "well enough to pass fairly discriminating multiple-choice items" (Nagy, Anderson, & Herman 1987, p. 262). This is about three to four times the number of words often taught each year as vocabulary words. Interestingly, there was no significant difference between proficient and less proficient readers' learning of words from context, in the particular study reported in depth in Nagy, Anderson, & Herman (1987).

• Various kinds of evidence suggest that many emergent and less proficient readers find it easiest to learn whole words, and to derive phonics knowledge from them (Moustafa, 1997; for related research, see also Ehri, 1994, 1995; Goswami, 1986,1988). In order to do this, they have to spend a lot of time reading. And as they read to become more proficient readers, they will still need to use context as a temporary support to get words they don't recognize. Part of what needs to happen is a chain reaction: using context will help less proficient readers get the words; repeated exposure to words will make the words identifiable on sight; an increased repetoire of sight words will facilitate knowledge of letter/sound relations; and the ability to use sight words, phonics, and increasingly sophisticated aspects of context will enable children to become more involved, proficient, effective, and competent readers: to actively learn and achieve through reading.

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Prepared by Constance Weaver and Joel Brown, for future printings of Creating Support for Effective Literacy Education by C. Weaver, L. Gillmeister-Krause, & G. Vento-Zogby. Portsmouth, NH; Heinemann, 1996. May be copied.

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