What is an Implied Relationship?

While reading a passage, there will be many concepts and ideas that are explicitly stated. These are easy to identify and then apply to any type of reading objective. However, there are many other ideas and relationships that are implied. Implied relationships between ideas are any that are not specifically stated in the passage. Instead, one must draw conclusions to define these relationships based on the information in the reading.

In order to recognize implied relationships, you must make an inference, which is an educated guess or assumption based on facts. This process is a difficult thing for many students, since most are used to doing simple recall of information after a reading. Recognizing an implied relationship takes much more thought and analysis. Think of discovering implied relationships as being a detective using clues to determine the perpetrator of a crime. Let’s look at the steps you can take to recognize implied relationships and ideas.

Discovery

The first thing you need to do after reading a selection is to discover relevant information, which means to find the facts. This step is essential since you cannot hope to go any further if you do not know the basic facts. The best way to do this is to check for basic understanding of the material. Teachers can use lower-level questioning, like short summaries or questions placed at certain parts of the selection. These should be simple questions with short answers. Do not involve analyzing or higher-lever thinking. Keep it simple so as not to confuse your students.

Think of this step as the same as a detective doing his preliminary investigation. He looks for clues at the crime scene, interviews witnesses, and basically uses any tools at his disposal to gather information. In the same way, your students need to investigate and gather information from the reading selection.

Organize

Next, you need to organize the facts. The information will be useless unless you can arrange it in a way to see what is important. A great way to do this is to use a graphic organizer, which is a visual representation of information. If you can see the facts physically, or set them up in some new way, then it will be easier to see new relationships. Students can make a flow chart, a diagram, a table, a graph, or any other visual. Then fill the graphic organizer in with the information found in the discovery phase.

A detective does the exact same thing after he has collected his information and clues. He organizes what he has found using a variety of forms. Have you ever seen a TV show or movie where the detective posts all his clues, evidence, pictures, etc. on a bulletin board? He may even use string to show the connections between the items. This is a means to organizing information. Students can use the same principle to create a visual to see how information might be connected. Most of these relationships will be obvious, but noting the obvious relationships will help to make the implied ones become clear.

Analyze

Lastly, you need to use the graphic organizer to analyze and synthesize. To analyze means to break down information to examine the relationships. You may have even done this already depending on the graphic organizer you used. Then you can synthesize, which means to combine all the pieces into one coherent idea. Use the new relationships you discovered from the graphic organizer to draw a conclusion based on the facts and information. This coherent idea, or conclusion that is drawn, will be the implied relationship.

Detectives also analyze and synthesize during an investigation. Remember, criminals don’t usually voluntarily confess to a crime. Instead, the detective must break down all the information and pull pieces together to figure out the person responsible. This is drawing a conclusion based on facts, which is the same as recognizing an implied relationship. Have your students do the same to draw conclusions about the reading passage.

Lesson Summary

To review, an implied relationship is one that is not explicitly stated in the reading selection. Instead, you must draw a conclusion based on the facts.

The first step is discovery, which means to find the facts. Next, organize those facts in order to make the information easier to process later on. Use a graphic organizer, or some sort of visual representation, to help with this stage. Last, analyze and synthesize the information. Break down the facts into logical pieces and then pull those pieces together to draw some logical conclusion. If you follow these steps, recognizing implied relationships will become a reading strength.