To determine whether less able readers could use the strategies they had been taught, a study investigated the transfer effects of training in the use of graphic organizers and summary writing on readers' recognition of the compare/contrast text structure. Subjects, 70 freshmen at a western New York state college of liberal arts and sciences in a required developmental reading/study skills course, were randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group and divided into four ability levels for each group according to raw score performance on the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test comprehension subtest. Subjects were given instruction on eight readings consisting of scientific expository text, each of which had a comparison-contrast internal organization; they then took an evaluation posttest consisting of four scientific comparison-contrast passages. Results indicated that transfer of training to real-world tasks did occur at each of the ability levels tested. However, training in the strategy did not appear to have any effect on the subjects (as compared to those in the control groups), except for the lowest ability group which apparently did benefit from the training. (One table of data and nine figures are included, and 17 references and one appendix are attached.) (MS)