A COMPARISON OF TWO DISCUSSION STRATEGIES ON STUDENTS' COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION OF COMPLEX LITERATURE

Abstract

This study compared the effects of two discussion techniques on students' comprehension and interpretation of complex literature. The techniques used were the Great Books approach, which involves discussion after students have read a selection, and Questioning the Author, which involves students discussing a selection during the course of reading it. All students in the sixth- and seventh-grade classes of a school with a predominantly AfricanAmerican, lower SES enrollment were involved in the study. Students read and discussed four selections from the Junior Great Books series, with the sixth graders using the Questioning the Author approach, and the seventh graders using the Great Books approach. After reading, students were asked to provide a free recall of the story and to respond to a series of open-ended questions. Across all stories, means for scores on both the recalls and the responses to the open-ended questions were higher for the students who participated in the Questioning the Author discussions than the students who participated in the Great Books discussions. Further analyses revealed that students in the Questioning the Author discussions provided longer recalls and that the recalls included more of the complex story elements than students in the Great Books discussions.