The Effects of Rhetorical Organization in Expository Prose on ESL Readers in Singapore

Abstract

This paper reports an experimental study carried out at the In stitute of Education in 1987 to find out the effects of rhetorical organization in expository prose on ESL readers in Singapore. The study was undertaken mainly to test the findings of a study by Carrell (1984) on ESL readers in USA. As an extension of the earlier study, which used foreign students at an American university as subjects, the present study incorporated three levels of language proficiency: school, college* and university graduates. Results of the study con firm two of the findings in the Carrell study: that different rhetorical organizations have differential effects on the recall of Singapore readers, and that readers who recognized and used the rhetorical organization of the original texts recalled more idea units in their recall protocols. The finding that readers with different native languages showed different recall patterns for the various rhetorical organizations is not confirmed in the present study. The paper dis cusses the findings with some possible explanations where the results do not confirm those of the earlier study, and also implications for further research.