Which term describes constructing meaning from what is read, drawing on prior knowledge, culture and social background, and monitoring strategies?

• A. Cues
• B. Comprehension
• C. Anchor Book
• D. Decoding

Answer: (B)

Comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from what you read by actively linking the text to your own background knowledge, cultural understandings, and social context, while also using strategies to check and repair your understanding as you go. This means reading isn’t just decoding words; it’s making sense of ideas by bringing prior experiences to the text, recognizing how culture and social background influence interpretation, and monitoring your understanding—pausing to ask questions, paraphrase, predict what might happen next, and reread when something doesn’t quite fit.

Decoding, by contrast, is about turning printed letters and sounds into spoken words, a foundational skill that enables reading but does not by itself capture the meaning-making process described here. The idea of cues refers to the signals readers use to infer meaning (like semantic, syntactic, or graphophonic cues) within comprehension, but the term that best names the overall act of constructing meaning with background knowledge and monitoring is comprehension. An anchor book isn’t a standard term for this concept.