The Effects of Teaching a Specific Top-Level Structure on the Organization of Written Texts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching a specific top-level structure on students' recall and organization of expository text. The hypothesis to be investigated was that students explicitly taught the scientific report text structure schema would show improved recall and organization of written report text protocols. The report text structure utilized in this study was derived from Sloan and Latham's top-level structure of text organization devised from schema theory and semantic memory models. The experimental design involved a pre-test-post-test format. Sixty nine year four students were tested on reading achievement and categorized as novice or better readers. Students from each group of readers were then randomly assigned to either the two control (structured/unstructured) or two experimental (structured/unstructured) groups. Those readers in the structured text group were read an organized report text (based on Sloan and Latham's scientific report text) while the unstructured text group were read text devoid of organization. Subjects were asked to provide written recalls of the content information in an immediate test condition. Three weeks later a second recall test was administered to determine if there had been any long term change to text structure schema and comprehension. The treatment phase was conducted over a three week period. During this time the experimental group were explicitly taught the top-level structure of the scientific report text while their control counterparts were involved in the 'reading only' of the scientific report.

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