Abstract: Natural learning of word meanings from context during reading and the factors which might affect it were investigated in this study. 301 stu-dents in the third- and fifth-grade were asked to read the texts first, thenreceive a test on the knowledge of unfamiliar words from the texts. Sig-nificant effect of learning from context were found in all grades and abilitylevels of the students. The conceptual difficulty of words,the morphologicaltransparency of words, the strength of contextual support, and the amountof children's reading outside of school were found to be significantly relatedto learning from context.

Key words: children, reading, natural learning, context, vocabulary