Book Description

A study investigated whether adult anglophone readers of French could be taught to use the organizational patterns (top-level structures, or TLSs) in expository text and whether they could then use this knowledge (the structure strategy) to facilitate reading comprehension as measured quantitatively through immediate free recall. Subjects were 43 university students of high intermediate level French proficiency divided into experimental (n=21) and control (n=22) groups. The experimental group received training in the use of five TLSs: description; sequence; causation; problem solution; and comparison. Training concentrated on use of the TLSs and their corresponding signal words as strategy for promoting recall. All subjects were pre- and posttested for reading comprehension and recall. Subjects also completed rating scales to estimate text difficulty, memorability, affect, interest, background knowledge, clarity of argument, organization, recommendations, content, and discussion of content. Results indicate that: text topic was a significant factor in recall, suggesting that effects of training in structure strategy cannot be predicted across topics; more proficient readers appeared to have the structure strategy already, and those trained in it had improved recall; structure strategy is teachable; reading time was not significantly related to recall; and longer passages seemed to offer no disadvantages. (MSE)