Novice Strategies for Comprehending Technical Texts

Organization and comprehensibility in scientific proofs: or, "Consider a particle p…"

“…This limitation on level of physics experience was selected to ensure that subjects were not familiar with the passage topics, and had not had extensive exposure to proof-first texts. Prior research suggests that students with this level of physics training are qualitatively different from experts (e.g., graduate students or faculty) in the manner in which they approach scientific texts, and in their understanding of the nature of scientific material (Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1986, 1988; see also Cook & Mayer, 1988). Therefore although the subjects in the current research had undoubtedly had some experience with proof-first texts (both in mathematics and science courses), there is good reason to believe that they would not have developed expert strategies for dealing with this specialized text structure.…”

Reading's Slick with New Audio Texts and Strategies

“…Similar studies (e.g., Daniels, 1996;Wang 1996) showed that teachers need to be aware of the functional value of the written material provided to their students. In addition to problems with readability, many students-those with and without disabilities-spend an excessive amount of time decoding difficult concepts and vocabulary at the expense of effective, higher-level comprehension (Dee Lucas & Larkin, 1986, 1988.…”

New Insights about Teaching College Reading: A Review of Recent Research

“…These studies suggest that we must either train students how to read prooffirst materials and to learn to find the principle quickly in science and math textbooks so that they can organize their ideas and process the material more easily (see Dee-Lucas & Larkin, 1988, for a description of strategies for comprehending scientific texts), or encourage science text book authors to organize material in a principle-first manner especially when writing to a general audience of beginning students. Since the latter goal is more difficult and will take much longer to accomplish, it seems important that reading instructors spend time and effort in training students to read science texts.…”