ELT365 · Day 154 — Top-down processing — using what you already know

Idea — Top-down processing means using prior knowledge, context, and expectations to predict and understand a text. Learners draw on what they know about the world to fill gaps.

Example — Seeing the headline ‘Earthquake hits Japan’ activates schema: location, damage, rescue. A learner predicts the article before reading a word.

Try — Show learners a headline only. Ask: what will this text say? What do you already know about this topic?

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