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2 experiments with 36 community volunteers and 123 undergraduates are conducted in which audio re-recordings of texts transcribed from TV newscasts were presented to independent groups, one group in each case hearing a bulletin with original text structures (as broadcast), the other with key stories revised in accord with story-grammar notions and restoring chronological sequence in the narrative. Text restructuring improved learning, especially of information central to the main points of stories. Such text revision also affected judgments of bias without altering assessment of writing quality. Attention to assuring more coherent story structures in newscast texts could counter the problems ...

2 experiments with 36 community volunteers and 123 undergraduates are conducted in which audio re-recordings of texts transcribed from TV newscasts were presented to independent groups, one group in each case hearing a bulletin with original text structures (as broadcast), the other with key stories revised in accord with story-grammar notions and restoring chronological sequence in the narrative. Text restructuring improved learning, especially of information central to the main points of stories. Such text revision also affected judgments of bias without altering assessment of writing quality. Attention to assuring more coherent story structures in newscast texts could counter the problems ...

This study examined the effects of selected text features on students' main idea comprehension. In Study 1, 75 4th, 78 6th, and 107 11th graders in the US identified the main contrived instructional texts and less constrained texts like those in content area textbooks. In Study 2, Ss identified the main ideas of texts of 4 different structures: listing, sequence, cause/effect, and comparison/contrast. In half of the texts of each structure, the main idea was explicit; in the other half, it was implicit. Results show that Ss inferred significantly fewer correct main ideas for the less constrained texts than for ...

This study examined the effects of selected text features on students' main idea comprehension. In Study 1, 75 4th, 78 6th, and 107 11th graders in the US identified the main contrived instructional texts and less constrained texts like those in content area textbooks. In Study 2, Ss identified the main ideas of texts of 4 different structures: listing, sequence, cause/effect, and comparison/contrast. In half of the texts of each structure, the main idea was explicit; in the other half, it was implicit. Results show that Ss inferred significantly fewer correct main ideas for the less constrained texts than for ...

This study examined differences in 55 11th graders' vocabulary learning from original and revised contextual information. Materials included 2 passages from a US history text, each embedding 10 pertinent target words. One version left the original passage intact; a 2nd version was revised for each target word according to 4 contextual characteristics. Ss were of high and average ability. Results show that the high-ability group outscored the average-ability group on all dependent measures, although both groups did significantly better on posttest over pretest tasks. On the revised text passages, Ss received higher scores on both word definition and significance measures ...

This study investigated, in 2 experiments, whether readers experience comprehension difficulty when they read texts in which local coherence is maintained but global incoherence is introduced. Ss read passages containing an elaborate description of a main character presented early in the text that was inconsistent with actions carried out by the main character later in the text. In Exp 1, reading times for critical sentences were significantly longer when the earlier description and the critical sentences were inconsistent. In Exp 2, resolution of global inconsistencies improved memory for the regions of the text that involved the inconsistencies. The results are ...

This study investigated, in 2 experiments, whether readers experience comprehension difficulty when they read texts in which local coherence is maintained but global incoherence is introduced. Ss read passages containing an elaborate description of a main character presented early in the text that was inconsistent with actions carried out by the main character later in the text. In Exp 1, reading times for critical sentences were significantly longer when the earlier description and the critical sentences were inconsistent. In Exp 2, resolution of global inconsistencies improved memory for the regions of the text that involved the inconsistencies. The results are ...

Text-related variables such as sentence complexity and vocabulary load were examined in three secondary-school human and social biology textbooks. Content and non-content words, technical (including biological words) and non-technical words, rare and frequent words, and word repetitions were considered. These were intercorrelated with readability estimates from teacher and student judgements, a cloze test, and a Fry graph to establish the significance of these variables in readability. The study involved 397 'secondary three' students in 'express' classes from five, English-stream, government secondary schools, and 85 biology teachers from 133 secondary schools in Singapore. Ten cloze tests with every fifth-word deletions were ...

This study is an expansion to the research on causal relatedness by investigating whether connectives affect the impact of causal relatedness on reading time and memory. Because authors use connectives, such as "therefore", to indicate a causal relation among clauses, the effect of a connective on reading time and memory would likely vary with levels of causal relatedness. This article discusses prior research on the role of connectives on text comprehension experiment. Experiment 1: the impact of causal connectives and levels of relatedness on text comprehension. Experiment 2: the impact of adversative connectives and levels of relatedness on comprehension. ...

This study is an expansion to the research on causal relatedness by investigating whether connectives affect the impact of causal relatedness on reading time and memory. Because authors use connectives, such as "therefore", to indicate a causal relation among clauses, the effect of a connective on reading time and memory would likely vary with levels of causal relatedness. This article discusses prior research on the role of connectives on text comprehension experiment. Experiment 1: the impact of causal connectives and levels of relatedness on text comprehension. Experiment 2: the impact of adversative connectives and levels of relatedness on comprehension. ...