New Hampshire Foundations of Reading Practice Test

Instruction in structural analysis primarily promotes reading comprehension by equipping students with what?

1. Strategies for understanding the meanings of unfamiliar multisyllable words.

2. Facilitating their ability to use phonics generalizations to decode words.

3. Enhancing their familiarity with text structures and features used in different genres.

4. Increasing their knowledge of key vocabulary found in content-area textbooks.

The correct answer is: Enhancing their familiarity with text structures and features used in different genres.

The focus of instruction in structural analysis is mainly on helping students understand the structure of words, including prefixes, suffixes, and root words. This understanding allows students to break down complex, multisyllabic words and deduce their meanings, which plays a significant role in enhancing reading comprehension. By recognizing common parts of words and how they contribute to meaning, students are better equipped to tackle unfamiliar words they encounter in text, leading to improved comprehension. While options describing familiarity with phonics generalizations or vocabulary knowledge are relevant to reading skills, they do not specifically address the structural components of words that structural analysis emphasizes. Understanding text structures and features broadly applies to different genres but isn't the main goal of structural analysis. Instead, structural analysis zeroes in on the morphological elements of language, making option A the most aligned with the core purpose of the strategy to promote better comprehension through word understanding.