7:3 Inferencing

Where did I find this word?

This is a word that has come up time and again in lesson plans, scholarly articles, required literacy skills lists, graduate courses, and of course, clinic.

This word came up in a methods class I am taking this semester in a unit on comprehension instruction. 

What is the definition of this word?

Wikipedia.com (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferencing) has a solid definition of the word.  The website suggests that inferencing  is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.

After some careful deliberation, we as a whole class came up with a very simple yet effective definition of inferencing.  We decided that:

     Inferencing = background knowledge + Text Concepts.

In other words, inferencing is taking what a student already knows (background knowledge) and then adding to that the concepts presented within the text (text concepts) and using those two main ingredients to come to a conclusion about the upcoming text.

What is my level of familiarity with this word?

As I stated earlier, this word has come up many times over my literacy studies at Nazareth.  I guess I knew what the word meant but I couldn't explain it and I have an extremely difficult time teaching the concept of inferencing.  Because I understand it is a widely used comprehension strategy, I did some research into teaching the concept the right way, so now I have a firmer grasp on what the true definition of the concept is.

Do I want to know this word well?  Why?

As a teacher I should know this word well, I should be able to explain it, model it, answer queries about it, etc. but if I am just simply a reader, knowing this word well isn't very important to me.  As a reader, I know that I know how to inference and that I do it constantly while reading, but the response is so automatic that I don't think about doing it, I just do it.

Do I want others to know this word well? Why?

Any educators teaching English, Literacy, or Reading should understand this word well.  I think that it is one of the most difficult strategies to teach children. 

I don't feel that the general public needs to know this word well.  I think we all do it, we just don't think about doing it.