Types of knowledge that learners use to make sense of a text

According to Hedge there are 6 types of knowledge that allow readers to guess the meanings of unknown words in the text. I find this idea quite interesting, so I have decided to check if it is really so and if it is applicable to the real life. 

In the lesson notes to Module 4 we were suggested to have a look at 2 websites in foreign languages (Czech (www.zvedavec.org) and Greek (www.agelioforos.gr). And it was really amazing to see yourself what complete beginners feel when they are asked to read a text.

I know neither Greek nor Czech. I am not familiar with the Greek alphabet, so it is impossible for me even to read a text. Czech is a Slavic language, so as a Russian-speaker I can understand meanings of a few words. Besides grammar rules of the Czech language are a bit similar to Russian, so sometimes I can identify syntactic functions of unknown words. That is why to maintain the experimental integrity I decided to add one more language: Finnish (www.hs.fi). I do not know it either and it is not close to any language I know, but at least its script is familiar to me.

So let’s have a look at Czech, Finnish and Greek news websites in the light of Hedge’s theory of 6 types of knowledge.

Type of knowledge	Definition	Czech (script is familiar, some prior knowledge of grammar and vocabulary)	Finnish (script is familiar, no prior knowledge of grammar and vocabulary)	Greek (script is not familiar, no prior knowledge of grammar and vocabulary)
Syntactic knowledge	The knowledge of grammatical relations of words within a sentence that allows a reader to guess a possible part of speech of the unknown word	“Láska k národu” Noun (subject) + preposition + noun (object)	-	-
Morphological knowledge	The knowledge of morphological rules and laws of morphological parsing that allows to identify a semantic field.	“a pomocí” “ na pomoc” Different grammatical cases of 1 word	-	-
General world knowledge	Extralinguistic knowledge that allows a reader to guess the meaning relying on his personal experience and intuition	My general knowledge of news websites structure allows me to understand, that “sobota” is Saturday and “únor” is February	My general knowledge of news websites structure allows me to understand, that “uutiset” is news	My general knowledge of news websites structure allows me to understand, that “Σάββατο” is Saturday and “Φεβρουαρίου” is February
Sociocultural knowledge	Knowledge of social and cultural peculiarities	The section “Zábava” contains the following subsections: Anekdoty, Humor, Kultura. Relying on my sociocultural knowledge I may assume that “Zábava” means entertainment.	-	-
Topic knowledge	The knowledge of a text theme may allow a reader to make suggestions concerning unknown words	-	-	-
Genre knowledge	The knowledge of a text genre may allow a reader to make suggestions concerning general ideas of what the text is about	Top texts on news websites are usually about political or economic issues	Top texts on news websites are usually about political or economic issues	Top texts on news websites are usually about political or economic issues

So, these 6 types of knowledge really work when you have some prior knowledge of a foreign language. In this case you can apply both systemic knowledge (# 1, 2) and schematic knowledge (# 3, 4, 5, 6). But when you are not familiar with a foreign language at all (and it doesn’t actually matter if you know its script or not), these 6 types of knowledge will not help you to read and understand texts. May be to some degree you can rely on the schematic knowledge, but just to identify some single elements, but not the general idea of the text.