The present study investigated comprehension processes and strategy use of second-grade low- and high-comprehending readers when reading expository and narrative texts for comprehension. Results from think-aloud protocols indicated that text genre affected the way the readers processed the texts. When reading narrative texts they made more text-based and knowledge-based inferences, and when reading expository texts they made more comments and asked more questions, but also made a higher number of invalid knowledge-based inferences. Furthermore, low- and high-comprehending readers did not differ in the patterns of text-processing strategies used: all readers used a variety of comprehension strategies, ranging from literal repetitions to elaborate knowledge-based inferences. There was one exception: for expository texts, low-comprehending readers generated a higher number of inaccurate elaborative and predictive inferences. Finally, the results confirmed and extended prior research by showing that low-comprehending readers can be classified either as readers who construct a limited mental representation that mainly reflects the literal meaning of the text (struggling paraphrasers), or as readers who attempt to enrich their mental representation by generating elaborative and predictive inferences (struggling elaborators). A similar dichotomy was observed for high-comprehending readers.
To create a coherent and correct mental representation of a text, readers must validate incoming information; they must monitor information for consistency with the preceding text and their background knowledge. The current study aims to contrast text-and knowledge-based monitoring to investigate their unique influences on processing and whether validation is passive or reader-initiated. Therefore, we collected reading times in a selfpaced experiment using expository texts containing information that conflicts with either the preceding text or readers' background knowledge. Results show that text-and knowledge-based monitoring have different time courses and that working memory affects only knowledge-based monitoring. Furthermore, our results suggest that validation could occur at different levels of processing and perhaps draw on different mixes of passive and reader-initiated processes. These results contribute to our understanding of monitoring during reading and of how different sources of information can influence such monitoring. ARTICLE HISTORY
van den Berg a and Paul W. van den Broek b a leiden university Graduate School of teaching (iclon), leiden, the netherlands; b institute of Pedagogical Sciences, leiden university, leiden, the netherlands ABSTRACT Research skills are important for university graduates, but little is known about undergraduates' motivation for research. In this study, self-efficacy beliefs and intrinsic motivation for several research activities were measured three times during an undergraduate research project (N = 147 students). In order to promote self-efficacy for writing and collaboration, a collaboration script was developed and tested on half of the students. Twelve students were interviewed three times to gather in-depth information about motivational and selfefficacy beliefs. All measures except intrinsic motivation for research increased significantly during the project. Interview results suggest that enactive mastery and positive social interdependence promoted self-efficacy. Feelings of relatedness seemed to promote intrinsic motivation for writing. Lack of autonomy and low perceived relevance may explain why motivation for research remained stable. The script had no impact on self-efficacy beliefs. Relatedness, autonomy and positive social interdependence may boost motivation for research, but more evidence is needed.
This study assessed the role that structural properties of texts play in the mental representations of second-language (L2) readers. In particular, we investigated the extent to which 47 L2 readers of English used structural properties of a text (causal factors, story-grammar category, and hierarchical level) to "fill in" gaps in their mental representations. L2 readers' recall protocols of narrative texts were analyzed and compared with those of 72 L1 readers of English using two scoring criteria: meaning-preserving and structure-preserving. The first credits information that is either verbatim or a close paraphrase of the original textual information; the second credits information that fulfills the same structural function as the original text unit. We found that L2 readers'We thank Erik Arthur for his help in scoring the recall protocols; Hifumi Ito for her help with translation; and Hidetaka Tamai for data collection. We also acknowledge the students of Midorigaoka Senior High School for their participation. T w o anonymous reviewers made useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Requests for reprints may be sent to Yukie Horiba, Department of Asian Languages, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003. Telephone: (413) 545-0886. Internet: yukieh@titan.ucc.umas.edu 345 346 Language Learning VOl. 43, No. 3structure-preserving recalls were substantially higher than were their meaning-preservingrecalls, and that the effects of particular structural properties (i.e., causal connections and story-grammar category) interacted with the scoring criterion. These results indicate that these L2 readers used topdown processing to preserve the structural integrity of a text.
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