The Effects of the Paraphrasing Strategy on the Reading Comprehension of Middle School Students at Risk for Failure in Reading

Abstract

Reading is an important component of academic success and a skill required for many adult responsibilities. Many strategies exist that claim to increase reading comprehension. However, in contrast to foundational reading skills (e.g., vocabulary, fluency, decoding), there is relatively little research that has been done on reading comprehension strategies. This study investigated the use of self-regulated strategy development paired with the “RAP” paraphrasing strategy as a way to increase reading comprehension. Participants were three sixth-grade students from a midwestern state. Results indicate that use of the RAP paraphrasing strategy increased reading comprehension.

RAP: A Reading Comprehension Strategy for Students with Learning Disabilities and Concomitant Speech-Language Impairments or ADHD

“…Previous researchers demonstrated improvements in answering multiple-choice or open-ended comprehension questions similar to the present study with the RAP strategy (Ellis & Graves, 1990;Hagaman et al, 2012;Hagaman & Reid, 2008;Katims & Harris, 1997;Lauterbach & Bender, 1995;Lee & Von Colln, 2003). Of those studies, only the Hagaman and Reid and Hagaman and colleagues' studies addressed positive treatment effects for both literal and inferential questions.…”

“…Unlike previous researchers who found improvements when students answered multiple-choice or open-ended comprehension questions (Ellis & Graves, 1990;Katims & Harris, 1997;Lauterbach & Bender, 1995;Lee & Von Colln, 2003), the present study also produced positive results for inferential comprehension such as those obtained by Hagaman & Reid (2008) and Hagaman et al (2012) but extended to students with learning disabilities.…”

“…One possible reason why literal comprehension continued to improve during maintenance was because participants reported using RAP in their general education classrooms that, consequently, may have lead to additional practice. Past researchers using RAP only conducted maintenance probes for up to two weeks (Ellis & Graves, 1990;Hagaman & Reid, 2008;Lauterbach & Bender, 1995). Therefore, present study adds to the literature on RAP because maintenance probes were conducted for two months after intervention and positive gains still occurred.…”

“…Third, the multiple-choice test items and possible answers were read aloud to participants. This was done because the purpose of the study was to measure comprehension, not focus on decoding-a practice also used by Hagaman and Reid (2008).…”

“…Schumaker et al (1984) found that students improved their reading comprehension 36% after learning RAP. It also has been effective for increasing reading skills for adolescents in middle school and high school with and without LD (Ellis & Graves, 1990;Hagaman & Reid, 2008;Katims & Harris, 1997;Lauterbach & Bender, 1995;Lee & Von Colln, 2003). Hagaman, Casey, and Reid (2012) found the RAP strategy increased reading comprehension of third grade students who were fluent readers but experienced difficulty with comprehension.…”