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Textbooks may be the most predominant instructional tool in America

Although research suggests that textbook organization affects reading comprehension,  evaluations of textbooks have found many to be poorly written. Poorly written textbooks may play a part in the comprehension difficulties of poor readers, especially those  who have difficulty recalling content, organizing information, identifying main ideas,  and discriminating between relevant and nonrelevant information.

In these contexts, students have demonstrated varying reading comprehension difficulties, whether the text was a story, social studies chapter, science experiment,  or mathematics word problem.

students with diverse learning needs

provided evidence that the organization of  text, students' awareness of that organization, and students' strategic use of text  organization affect their comprehension.

organization of text includes the visual, physical organization (e.g., headings, subheadings, location of main idea, spacing) as well as less visible, more abstract text structures (e.g., narrative, sequence, or descriptive text structures) (see Figure 3). The three general areas of convergent evidence from this literature review are:

Well-presented physical text facilitates reading comprehension.

Text structure and student awareness of text structure are highly related to reading comprehension.

Explicit instruction in the physical presentation of text and/or text structure facilitates reading comprehension.

Well-Presented Physical Text Facilitates Reading Comprehension

enables readers to identify the relevant information  in text, including main ideas and relations between ideas, skills that are central  to comprehension

visual cues

clearly indicate the main  idea, the relations between important information, and the thought units within a  sentence.

focus readers' attention on the global, macrostructure of a  text, while the indicators of thought units within sentences focus readers' attention  on phrases rather than letters and words.

ability to comprehend main ideas differentiates good and poor readers  and is directly related to general comprehension ability

summarizing, and outlining

Yet, main idea statements often do not appear  as the first sentence in a paragraph or are omitted from content area textbooks

clarity and coherence with which main ideas are presented in text has been found  to facilitate their identification

ordering topics systematically

stating a good topic organization in the opening paragraph

placing the topic  sentence of a paragraph at the beginning of a paragraph rather than embedding or inferring  it

arranging supporting  details in recognizable patterns that exemplify superordinate/ subordinate relations

ability to form relations between important information in text.

semantic and syntactic cues. Semantic cues include topic sentences  to signal text organization

). Syntactic  cues include noncontent signal words such as "first," "second," and "finally" to  indicate sequential organization

Headings and subheadings are additional cues

the effect of "chunking," or using spaces to divide information in sentences  into meaningful thought units or phrases (e.g., noun phrases, verb phrases). Chunking  information allows "perception and recall of idea units rather than letters or single words"

chunked text benefited  low performers and was not a detriment for high performers. While it may be difficult for teachers to chunk material in textbooks, Casteel suggested having students chunk  verb, noun, and object phrases by placing vertical lines between the chunks or underlining  chunks prior to reading.

Strategic Use of Well-Presented Text

Summarizing, integrating information, and forming relations between important information  are important reading comprehension skills. Fluent readers use textual cues to identify  important information to include in summaries

However, when the main idea is implicit rather than clearly presented, normally  achieving students have demonstrated difficulty identifying main ideas and integrating  information

Chunked text appears to neither benefit nor hinder high-ability readers

when students with LD have comprehension difficulties, teachers need to consider  whether the students are able to identify the important information in a reading  passage. Therefore, they may need explicit training to increase sensitivity to important text information.

Text that clearly signals main ideas and relations between ideas facilitates comprehension.  Techniques for clearly presenting text include (a) ordering topics systematically;  (b) stating topic organization in the opening paragraph; (c) placing topic sentences at the beginning of paragraphs; (d) arranging supporting details in recognizable  patterns that exemplify superordinate/subordinate relations; (e) using precise language  to make clear the relations between concepts, ideas, and sentences; (f) using signal words such as "first," "second," and "finally;" and (g) using headings, subheadings,  and topic sentences to cue the interrelations between important ideas.

ext structure  appears to play an important role in reading comprehension. Moreover, there is strong  empirical evidence that readers' awareness of text structure is highly related to  reading comprehension.

Area of Convergence # 2: Text Structure and Student Awareness of Text Structure are  Highly Related to Reading Comprehension

common expository  texts include persuasion, explanation, comparison/contrast, enumeration or collection,  problem-solution, and description, designed primarily to inform the reader

two types of text: narrative and expository. Narrative  is more common than expository text and is usually a story written to entertain the  reader

narrative text depicts events, actions, emotions, or situations that people in a culture experience

normally involve (a) animate beings as characters with goals and motives;  (b) temporal and spatial placements usually presented at the beginning of the story;  (c) a problem or goal faced by the main character that imitates a major goal; (d)  plots or a series of episodes that eventually resolve the complication; (e) impacts upon  the reader's emotions and arousal levels; and (f) points (e.g., justice, honesty,  loyalty), morals, or themes

tory grammar refers to "abstract linguistic representation of the idea, events,  and personal motivations that comprise the flow of a story"

story grammar components and their  hierarchical relations represent frames or patterns that readers can use to store  information in long-term memory.

generate predictions about patterns of passage recall, passage summarization, importance  ratings of statement, passage statement clusters, and reading time, but there has been controversy over whether story grammars or other representations of knowledge  (e.g., knowledge about planning, social action, motives) can explain these predictions

While narrative text structure primarily entertains, expository text primarily communicates  information

Textbooks, essays, and most magazine articles are examples of expository text

While narrative text structures has largely focused on story grammars, research  on expository text has spanned a much broader range of organizational patterns. Common  expository text structures include compare/contrast, classification, illustration,  procedural description

sequence, enumeration or collection, problem-solution, and description

well-structured expository text facilitates comprehension  of main ideas or topics, rather than facts.

narrative appearing easier to comprehend and monitor than expository text.

text type affected recall and comprehension monitoring.  Students recalled significantly more idea units from narrative than expository passages.  When comparing texts with inconsistencies to texts without inconsistencies, students looked back more frequently for inconsistent narrative than inconsistent expository  text, suggesting that inconsistencies were more apparent in narrative than in expository  text. Students were also better able to verbally report on passage consistency after reading narrative than expository passages. Students reread expository passages  more frequently than narrative passages when the passages did not contain inconsistent  information, indicating that students found expository text more problematic than narrative text. Additionally, students reread more frequently when inconsistent text  was adjacent to the correct sentence than when it was far from the correct sentence.

learners "familiar" with text structure who read well-structured,  clearly cued text performed better on measures of global comprehension (e.g., main  topics) than students who did not demonstrate familiarity with test structure.

Student awareness of structural patterns in expository writing (e.g., sequence, causation,  comparison/contrast) facilitated recall of not only more text information, but more  theses or main ideas

strong research support that students have a greater  awareness of narrative than expository text structures

and that students remember and comprehend narrative text structure  easier than they do expository text structure

First, narrative content is more familiar to students than expository  content.

Second,  this familiar content of narrative includes event sequences  (e.g., intentional acts in pursuit of goals; events that occur in the material world).  Event sequences are the core content of children and adults' experience in everyday  life.

Third, narrative structure is prevalent in oral language

Normally achieving students appear more facile with both narrative and expository  text structures than diverse learners. One indicator of facility with text is the  number of times readers look back at text to correct comprehension failures. Good  readers had significantly more look-backs than poor readers for difficult (i.e., expository)  text and significantly more look-backs for expository than narrative passages. Good  readers also had more look-backs for inconsistent text than poor readers, though  the differences were not significant. Good readers correctly reported significantly more  inconsistencies than poor readers

The evidence is clear that text structure and students' awareness of text structure  are positively related to reading comprehension. Student sensitivity to text structure  may be developmental and varies according to text structure type. Generally, narrative is easier than expository text for students and some types of expository text are  easier than others (e.g., sequence was found to be easier than enumeration and description,  which in turn was found to be easier than compare/contrast)

Teachers should be aware of these variations and may want to attend more carefully  to text structure as students move to reading more expository text in the upper-elementary  school grades. Zabrucky and Ratner (1992) posed that teachers be concerned with increasing students' awareness of different text structures and informing students of  the impact of these structures on evaluation, regulation, and memory. Students should  be taught to adjust their reading and rereading skills and to assess their readiness  for recall when text information varies in difficulty. This instruction may be more  effective if it occurs for narrative before expository text.

Area of Convergence # 3: Explicit Instruction in Text Organization

What to Teach

xplicit, task-specific instruction on (a) how to  recognize the physical presentation of important information in text, including topic  sentences and where these usually occur in well-organized paragraphs; and (b) headings  and subheadings and their purposes.

two additional structural cues to teach students: the patterns that exemplify subordinate and superordinate relations; and signal words (e.g., "first," "finally").

teaching students  a summarizing strategy using the headings, subheadings, and paragraph topics of textbooks  resulted in more recalled text information than answering questions or studying.

Approaches to text structure instruction included both  systematic attention to clues that signal how authors relate ideas to one another  and systematic attempts to impose structure upon text.

suggested that teachers be concerned not only with increasing  students' awareness of different text structures, but also with informing students  of the impact text structures have on evaluation, regulation, and memory. They suggested generalizing metacognitive skills to more difficult expository passages after  training with narrative passages.

teaching students to study or create visual representations of key ideas  in text (e.g., networking, flowcharting, Con Struct, mapping, conceptual frames,  graphic organizers, conceptual mapping) benefited reading comprehension.

Graphic organizer instruction consisted of reading and rereading for 15 minutes, and  completing and studying graphic organizers for 20 minutes.

graphic organizers helped make mainstreaming a  valid instructional delivery system for all students.

major contribution of research has been to transform reading skills (e.g., summarize,  identify main ideas, identify relations between main ideas) into explicit strategies  that students can be taught directly

includes teaching students how to use (a) the physical presentation of text (e.g., location of topic  sentences, headings, subheadings, signal words) as a strategy to identify main ideas  and form interrelations between concepts, main ideas, and supporting details (Seidenberg, 1989); (b) a story grammar to identify the important ideas in narrative text (Gurney  et al., 1990; Newby et al., 1989); and (c)  expository text structures > to identify  concepts and interrelations or to impose interrelations upon poorly written text.  Examples of imposing text structure include visual representations of text (Horton et al.,  1990; Pearson & Fielding, 1991) and note sheets organized around text structure (Englert  & Thomas, 1987). Strategy instruction holds particular promise for students with  LD as they seem to lack the ability to engage in strategic activities and do not spontaneously  access and use cognitive strategies when these are needed

Expository text structures

Strategies to identify the main idea in text appear particularly important.

strong support  for explicit and direct instruction in text presentation and text structure.

cited studies that used  either a model-lead-test or model-guided practice-independent practice format.

followed a general pattern of (a) explaining the skill or component of text structure; (b) telling the importance;  (c) modeling how, when, and where to use the skill, and how to evaluate the effectiveness  of the skill; (d) providing guided and independent practice; (e) teaching for transfer; and (f) evaluating.

Caveats for Instruction

The first two areas are three-pronged, involving (a) presentation and structure of text, (b) students' awareness of text presentation and structure, and (c) students' strategic use of text presentation and structure. Text presentation facilitates reading comprehension if (a) main ideas are clearly stated and located at the beginnings of paragraphs; and (b) the relations between important information are clearly indicated by headings, subheadings, signal words, and sentences or paragraphs signaling text organization placed at the beginning of the passage. Extra spacing between thought units in sentences facilitates attention to ideas within sentences. Text structure facilitates reading comprehension, with narrative text structure being generally easier for students to recall and monitor than expository text structures.

However, it may be that simply presenting text in a clear, well-organized manner is not sufficient. Research suggests that students' awareness of that presentation and strategic use of text are also needed to enable students to identify relevant and nonrelevant information, main ideas, and relations between ideas. Normally achieving students appear to strategically use text organization to identify main ideas and relations between ideas. However, if main ideas are not clearly stated, even normally achieving students have demonstrated difficulty identifying important information, summarizing, and integrating information.

Unlike normally achieving students, diverse learners appear less aware of text organization and its use as a strategy. Many comprehension difficulties of diverse learners have been attributed to their deficits in text structure awareness. For example, they have demonstrated difficulty identifying main ideas, and discriminating between relevant and nonrelevant information. While demonstrating a knowledge of strategies, they fail to demonstrate a use of strategies.

The first two convergent areas and the importance of students' awareness and strategic use of text presentation lead to the third convergent area -- explicit instruction in text organization facilitates comprehension. Research supports instruction in the physical presentation of text, text structures, and strategic use of text organization to benefit reading comprehension. Research evidence also supports explicit instruction that follows a general pattern of (a) explaining the skill or component of text structure; (b) telling the importance; (c) modeling how, when, and where to use the skill, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the skill; (d) providing guided and independent practice; (e) teaching for transfer; and (f) evaluating.

The effect on reading comprehension of the presentation and structure of text is more global than local. Well-presented and structured text results in better comprehension of main ideas and relations between ideas than poorly presented or structured text. Likewise, students who are aware of or have had instruction in the physical presentation of text or text structure demonstrate more global comprehension than students who lack awareness or have not had instruction. Although students who are aware of text structure recall more than students who are not aware of text structure, there is often no difference between these students for local (i.e., details) comprehension.

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