NLP+Recommendations

NLP Recommendation Submitted by Mei Ling Han In today’s environment, a typical classroom population is culturally diverse. Teachers should consider literacy materials to use in helping their students attain literacy development or promote reading comprehension. While the National Literacy Panel’s (2006) findings did not show a strong relationship between culturally relevant reading material and positive gains in understanding, there was some support for this approach to teaching literacy (McCarty, 1993; Kenner, 2000). Despite this weak association, negative implications were found when the reader and the literacy material do share any commonalities. Garcia (1991) reports when Spanish students do not have relevant background knowledge, it hinders their reading comprehension. When there are no prior knowledge differences, Spanish and monolingual students performed similarly. This suggests that not having the relevant background knowledge can impact a student’s literacy performance negatively.