ELT365 · Day 153 — Top-Down Processing

Idea — Top-down processing means using existing knowledge — of topics, genres, and the world — to predict and interpret incoming language. Schemata drive it.

Example — The title ‘A Recipe for Disaster’ activates cooking knowledge and idiom knowledge simultaneously. Both help before a single word is read.

Try — Give students a title only. Ask: what will this be about? Who wrote it? Who reads it? Then compare predictions with the actual text.

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