'The ability to make inferences is, in simple terms, the ability to use two or more pieces of information from a text in order to arrive at a third piece of information that is implicit.'
'one of the underpinning bases of inference is vocabulary’
Anne Kispal 2008
During the Birmingham ResearchEd talk I gave on reading, there was a small interruption. One of the stewards arrived to find out if there was an owner of a Jag in the room. Nobody responded and casually made a joke about what we could infer from that piece of information.
The person is blocking another person in the car park.
The person has left their lights on.
The person has quite a bit of money.
The person likes status.
In fact, there are quite a number of inferences I can make and some might be bordering on supposition and not really grounded inferences. What that one point highlighted was the amount of previous knowledge needed to build that one little inference. You need to know that a Jag meant a Jaguar car. You need to know that if people ask about a car then there’s usually several reasons why. You need to know that Jaguars are quite a flashy and expensive car. There’s a lot of information needed to build up those inferences. That’s why I have built cars and car manufacturing into a unit of work. I am joking.
I have taught for several years now and at the heart of reading and English teaching is inferences. I can teach students everything under the sun, yet when students are on their own, they need to be able to infer something from the text, independently. On their own. Unstructured. Unaided. In an exam. Or, in real life. When we read a poem, we make inferences. When we read a novel, we make inferences. When we read non-fiction, we make inferences. We are constantly making inferences about elements in English.
Let’s boil the types of inference we make in English to a more precise level.
[1] We make inferences about a character / setting or thing in a story.
What do they think, feel or really mean? This is usually based on tone, language, body language or actions.
[2] We make inferences about a reader’s thoughts or feelings towards a text.
What is the reader thinking at this point?
[3] We make inferences about the writer’s intent.
What do you think the writing is trying to say about X here?
Those three pillars of inference are what we focus on a lot in English. We could add more, but, for the time being, three is enough for now. Across our Trust, we are tracking how these elements are taught over KS1 to KS3. We see that inference and the ability to make inferences is a huge milestone in education. We are working on the decoding element and reading fluency, but inference, for us, is a massive leveller for students. It is what stops students from making big leaps in their thinking. If a student struggles to, independently, make inferences from a text, then they often can’t get to the next rung on the ladder. Skimming and scanning does not get you far. There needs to be something more.
Look at the GCSE Paper 2. It is full of students making inferences. Paper 1 adds in character inferences and inferences about the reader.
If I am honest, there has never been any explicit CPD about inferences in English. There’s been some programmes on inference training yet during all my time in teaching there’s been very little talk about it. Infer from that what you wish. I’ve had training on how to make Shakespeare engaging or how to incorporate ICT in my classroom, yet I haven’t really had any training on reading. CPD is often related to lots of ‘nice ideas, but where’s the pedagogy?’.
If I am going to help students get better at making inferences, and more credible and convincing inferences, then I need to understand a bit more about how inferences are formed and how we can support them. Me asking a question alone doesn’t make students better inferers (eww - don’t like that phrase). Informing a student that a statement is supposition and not an inference helps them to reevaluate that original statement and build a better inference. Let’s mock up an example to prove a point.
Student: I think that the Jag belongs to a headteacher.
Teacher: Where’s your evidence for it to be a headteacher and not a consultant?
The question leads students to explore the evidence they have and refine their inference. But, we don’t address supposition in lessons enough. If we think of how we discuss texts, a large part of the time is building inferences and not interrogating inferences. If there’s any supposition, we tend to seek out another idea from the same or a different student. We don’t interrogate how the student led themselves to that idea. In fact, we don’t interrogate inferences full stop. I’d argue we rely on students making so many inferences in lessons, yet we focus on the answer rather than the process. We listen out for good inferences and praise them with the idea students will repeat the process naturally or through some kind of osmosis.
To explore the process of inference, all teachers need to know something about the process. Skimming and scanning is problematic and dominates schools, but all exams and teachers want students to make ideas about a text and not just find bits of information. The following is a simplification of key terms in Anne Kispal’s 2008 report on inference and it makes a good starting point for this aspect of reading.
When does the inference take place?
Online inference - during the process reading
Offline inference - after the process of reading
For lots of teachers, we make inferring a large offline experience. We have read the text and now let’s have some ideas. That’s why questioning in the reading process helps students. It models what we naturally do: build up a range of inferences during the reading process. If we are going to model effectively then we need to model the build of inferences during the process.
Where in the text is the inference?
Local inferences - a specific line or phrase
Global inferences - whole text
Good readers will use a combination of local and global inferences to build an idea. And some even more effective readers use precise local inferences to address inconsistencies and contradictions. Some of our weaker readers rely on just local inferences and we, as teachers, need to model how an idea can be constructed globally and locally.
What in the text is being connected?
Coherence inferences - a inference that links knowledge across a text
Elaborative inferences - gap filling inference - using prior knowledge to form an inference
Elaborative inferences are, usually, what we think of when we discuss inferences. Coherence inferences are probably the most underused and considered aspects of reading. We do it so automatically when reading a story, yet for non-fiction is a massive aspect students need to master. What does the ‘it’ and ‘this’ refer to? When we’ve read a story about a character called Tom, we get it is Tom the story refers to when the pronoun ‘he’ is used. Yet, in non-fiction you don’t have that narrative simplicity or support and you’ll have a cast of twenty people and twenty things to attach ‘this’ or ‘it to. ’
So once you have that understanding of inferences we can help support students better in lessons. We can put emphasis on students making online and not just offlines inferences. We can ensure students make local and global inferences. We can support students with coherence inferences across a text.
Then, we can interrogate precise inferences and discuss them as practitioners. What would you infer from a line? What would be a good inference? What do students need to do to get that good inference? What skills and knowledge are they using?
Here’s one to start off with. It is from Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Graveyard Book’ and it relates to a murderer wearing a type of glove.
What can we infer from the fact that he wore gloves made of the ‘thinnest lambskin’?
Answers on a postcard or Twitter.
I will be carrying on this reading thread in the next few blogs.
Thanks for reading,
Xris
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