This study examined how vocabulary knowledge, the familiarity of concepts, and analytic reasoning affect sixth-grade students' ability to learn word meanings from the context of natural passages in a basal reading textbook. The results indicated that students with higher levels of general vocabulary knowledge learned relatively more, even though they had less room for improvement. Low students were at a disadvantage not only because they initially knew fewer words but also because they understood words less well. Also among low vocabulary students, words representing familiar concepts were more likely to be learned than those representing unfamiliar concepts. The study suggested that general and passage specific vocabulary knowledge are important variables influencing learning from context. General analytic reasoning was not a significant factor.
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