Facilitating Retention through Instruction about Text Structure

Abstract

In an attempt to investigate the effectiveness of instruction in the use of text structure for comprehending and recalling textual information, ninety college students received one of three treatments. They received either a brief description of the organization of a text immediately prior to reading the text, after reading but before recalling the text, or they received no text-organization instruction. Research report and journalism structures were employed. For both text structures, subjects who received instruction prior to reading performed better on a delayed free recall test than subjects who received instruction prior to recall or than subjects who received no instruction. Subjects who received instruction prior to reading also had better recognition scores than subjects who received instruction prior to recall. Instruction prior to recall had no facilitative effect relative to the no-instruction control treatment. The research report structure led to better performance than the journalism structure. Results suggest that, when encountering well-organized text, skilled readers can profit from instruction about the structure of written materials.