What You Need to Know

Key Concept Diagram

Text-to-self connections link ideas in a text to your own personal experiences and feelings

Text-to-text connections identify similarities and differences between the current text and other texts you have read

Text-to-world connections relate the ideas in a text to real-world events, issues, or knowledge

Making explicit connections deepens understanding and helps readers engage critically with ideas

Key Vocabulary

Text-to-self connection

A link between something in a text and a personal experience or feeling

Text-to-text connection

A link between the current text and another text you have read or viewed

Text-to-world connection

A link between the text and a real-world issue, event, or fact

Intertextuality

The relationship between texts that reference or echo one another

Knowledge Check

Select the correct answer for each question. Click "Check Answer" to see if you are right.

Question 1

A student reads a story about a child moving to a new school and thinks, "I felt the same way when I changed schools." What type of connection is this?

Text-to-self Text-to-world Text-to-text Intertextual

Question 2

A student notices that the hero in the novel they are reading faces the same kind of journey as the hero in a film they watched. What type of connection is this?

Text-to-self Text-to-text Text-to-world Text-to-theme

Question 3

Why do text connections improve reading comprehension?

They make the text shorter and easier to read They replace the need to re-read the text They allow readers to relate new information to prior knowledge, deepening understanding They tell the reader how the story will end

Making Text Connections