Which processing involves decoding the language itself rather than relying on world knowledge to understand meaning?

• A. bottom-up processing
• B. top-down processing
• C. notional syllabus
• D. extrinsic modality

Answer: (A)

Bottom-up processing focuses on decoding the language itself. You start with the linguistic input—the sounds or letters, words, and grammar—and build meaning step by step from those cues. It doesn’t rely on what you already know about the world to interpret the sentence; understanding comes from the signal and the rules of language. In contrast, top-down processing uses context, expectations, and prior knowledge to infer meaning, filling gaps or predicting upcoming information. The other options aren’t about decoding language from the signal: a notional syllabus is a teaching framework about topics, and extrinsic modality refers to external aspects of language rather than how meaning is derived from linguistic input.