Some headlines from 'Why Knowledge Matters' ED Hirsch 2016

'There are no significant shortcuts to intellectual competence'

1/10

'Communication skills require domain specific knowledge'

2/10

'Too much time spent on test preparation is at the expense of too little time spent on gaining the wide knowledge needed for a broad vocabulary'

3/10

'Drills in formal comprehension skills have not raised reading scores; rather they have taken up a lot of class time that could have been devoted to knowledge building'

4/10

'Vocabulary size is the single most reliable correlate to reading ability'

5/10

'Systematically contextualised verbal responses are the most efficient means for gaining big vocabularies'

6/10

'Vocabulary gain is a very slow, incremental process requiring multiples exposures to a word in multiple contexts'

7/10

''The best way to ensure high reading comprehension in the long term is to ensure high oral comprehension: listening and talking as well as through reading'

8/10

'Comprehension involves making hypotheses about what words mean: this applies to listening as much as reading.

Listening ability is key to reading ability'

9/10

'Time spend on direct word study is time not spent on becoming familiar with new knowledge domains where word learning occurs naturally and up to four times faster and without effort'

10/10