Awareness of Four Text Structures: Effects on Recall of Expository Text

Abstract

THE PURPOSE of this study was to examine sixth-grade students' awareness of four expository text structures (collection, comparison/contrast, causation, and problem/solution) and their recall of texts written in those structures. Three measures of awareness with different cognitive demands (use of organization in written recall, use of organization in composition, and response to interviews) were employed to provide a deeper probing of students' awareness than previous research had yielded. Two recall measures were used that have been found to be sensitive to differences in readers' awareness of text structure: subjects' recall of main ideas versus details, and their recall of normal passages versus scrambled passages. The three awareness tasks produced different profiles of sixth-grade students' text structure awareness. The task most typically used in structure awareness studies (use of structure in written recall) was least informative about differences in awareness of the four text structures. The authors