Specific Knowledge and Comprehension

Knowledge and comprehension are essential components of an individual’s

understanding. Whether reading or watching or experiencing, individuals
gain knowledge about topics being discussed. Knowledge, however, can only
be retained if the individual can also comprehend the basic concept of the
topic. “To know” something means just to grasp a piece of information but
“to understand” that bit of information is much different. If you
comprehend what you know, you have a deeper meaning associated with
that knowledge and you can explain how that knowledge makes sense.

By definition, specific knowledge is knowledge that is costly to transfer

amongst individuals and general knowledge as knowledge that is
inexpensive to transmit. For example, general knowledge is knowledge that
can be researched through general information found in today’s media such
as the internet, books, television, or radio broadcast. Specific knowledge, on
the other hand, relies on relatively high level of abstraction and focuses on
the concepts and techniques of analysis rather than the understanding of
general knowledge of research. For example, Specific knowledge is
particularly well suited for economists who are interested in pursuing
careers or higher degrees or in quantitative fields such as finance and
business economics since these are difficult topics than average that require
a skill set to transfer amongst students and/or the public society as a whole.

Comprehension is the ability to understand and get meaning from spoken

and written language. Comprehension is comprised of a complex process
involving knowledge, experience, thinking, and teaching. Therefore,
effective comprehension instruction is necessary to help students
understand, remember, and communicate with others about what is read to
them and what they read. Comprehension skills are based on rich language
and experience with text from early in life. These experiences include
learning how to decode; becoming fluent in decoding with an extensive
repertoire of sight words; increasing vocabulary to include words commonly
found in texts; and learning how to get meaning from text using
comprehension processes

For example, some texts, like in philosophy, literature or scientific research,

may appear more difficult to read because of the prior knowledge they
assume, the tradition from which they come, or the tone, such as criticizing
or parodizing. An individual's ability to comprehend text is influenced by
their skills and their ability to process information. If word recognition is
difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read
individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is
read. There are a number of reading strategies to improve reading
comprehension and inferences, including improving one's vocabulary,
critical text analysis and practicing deep reading.