A comparison study of the effects of text structure training, reading practice and guided reading on reading comprehension

Abstract

In this study, children who were below-average in reading comprehension yet average or above-average in decoding were given opportunities to improve their understanding of text language, and thus improve their reading comprehension, through three different instructional approaches. One approach was designed to improve text language understanding by teaching about text structure. Another approach aimed to improve understanding of text language by increasing reading mileage. In a third (control) condition a guided reading approach was used. Ninety children (53 girls, 37 boys), aged 8-10 years, were randomly assigned to one of the three approaches. Instruction was given over a 17 week period. Children in each condition met twice a week for thirty minutes. Children were pretested and posttested on a range of standardised language and reading measures. A reader profile questionnaire and a measure of print exposure were also administered. The results of the study were based on 36 subgroup means (4 schools x 3 training groups x 3 years). The subgroup means were analysed using 3-way ANOVA procedures. It was predicted that teaching of metacognitive strategies, as in text structure instruction would be the most effective condition for improving understanding of the language of text. It was predicted that increasing reading mileage, by doing lots of reading, would be the next most effective. The overall results showed, however, that no one approach was clearly more effective than the others.