Instructional Events and Comprehension: Generalization across Passages

Abstract

Abstract. Sixth graders read one of sixteen randomly selected cause-effect passages after receiving one of six communications from an adult: (1) read carefully, (2) try to form an image of the material being read, (3) read for a specific detail, (4) read for the general causal relationship, (5) read to see how the passage is like a familiar example described by the adult, and (6) background information. Students who were told to read for a specific detail remembered that detail better following reading. General comprehension, as measured by the quantity and quality of free recall, was better for students told to form an image, given a familiar example, or given background information, than for students reading the same passages with instructions to read carefully. It was concluded that instructions that encourage the reader to relate old and new information are most effective in enhancing comprehension. The uniqueness of the study in randomly sampling from a population of passages was noted.In most classrooms, teacher-directed techniques for enhancing comprehension usually include some sort of orienting statement or purpose-setting question presented by the teacher just before the students read a passage. The teacher instructions may include: (a) giving the students background information, (b) asking them to read for some specific purpose, or (c) telling them to read carefully. It is not known whether these instructions really enhance comprehension, or if they do, under what conditions they are most effective. They have mainly evolved through pedagogical intuition within the field of reading education and are part of the Directed Reading Approach and other approaches to reading instruction.Recently, many studies have examined the effects on reading comprehension of events which precede reading. When research findings and practical intuition a Reprints may be requested from the authors, 624 Graduate Studies Research Center, Athens, Georgia 30602. 321 322Journal of Reading Behavior X ,4 are congruent, there is probably great validity to a particular practice. Where there is a discrepancy between research and practice, further investigation is essential. Discrepancies may occur (a) when researchers find one result, but practitioners observe another, {b) when researchers find support for a procedure that is not commonly used, or (c) when practitioners claim effectiveness for a procedure that has not been studied experimentally.The present study was conducted for two reasons. First, the intent was to test the external validity of events which have been found to improve comprehension in the laboratory by using a random sample of passages from sixth grade textbooks. The connection between laboratory research on reading and instructional practice is an important one because laboratory studies are usually conducted on one or two specially constructed passages. Only a few unpublished studies have been conducted using three or more passages (cf. Ruff, Note 1; Richmond, Note 3; Rowls, Note 2). As Coleman (1964) and dark (19...

An Extended Comparison of Adjunct Aids with Low-Average and Good Readers in the Sixth Grade

“…The good readers who had tried to answer the application prequestions for 6 weeks may have grown frustrated or disillusioned and may have ceased to read and think as carefully as they would have otherwise. A related conclusion was reached by Gagne and Memory (1978) in their onesession study.…”

“…One investigation of advance organizers (Saretsky, 1976) and two studies of adjunct questions (Goudey, 1969;Robinson, 1975) have failed to support the idea of ability-by-treatment interactions with middle grade students. However, the majority of reported adjunct aids studies in which ability was a variable have found significant ability-by-treatment interactions with students of this age (Gagne & Memory, 1978;Hudgins, Dorman, & Harris, 1979;Maher, 1975;Proger, Carter, Mann, Taylor, Bayuk, Morris, & Reckless, 1973;Rickards & Hatcher 1977-78;Watts, 1975) The investigation reported here included two distinct ability levels because of this trend in the results of previous studies.…”

“…Gagne and Memory (1978) found example prestatements to be effective with middle grade readers in their one-session investigation. In contrast, this seven-session study showed that type of adjunct aid to be relatively ineffective with low-average readers at that level.…”

“…Essentially the same ability-by-treatment interaction was obtained by Gagne and Memory (1978) using fre e recall rather than multiple-choice questions as a measure of understanding of the main ideas of cause-effect passages. In that one-session investigation low achieving sixth graders given why prequestions before passages recalled the main ideas of those passages significantly better than did the less able readers given no adjunct aid.…”

“…Studies that use arbitrarily selected multiple passages cannot take advantage of the possibly varied effectiveness of different types of adjunct aids with different types of passages. The only reported study with middle grade students that attempted to control the effect of passage structure (Gagne & Memory, 1978) did so by using sixteen passages involving the same writing pattern. Despite this strong design feature, the practical implications of that investigation were limited by the failure to include training or practice sessions before the comparison of the adjunct aids.…”