Analyzes the process of comprehension, distinguishing between comprehension and several related skills, and defining comprehension as the ability to identify the intended effects of a piece of writing and to explain what causes exist within the piece which produces these effects. (MD)

Research shows that effectively used writing plans (models of text organization) promote understanding of messages and that students can learn to use these plans. Writing plans include overall plans (antecedent/consequent, comparison, description, and response), emphasis plans that highlight certain subtopics, and cohesion plans that refer to the…

The production of a book review journal by students is suggested as a way of encouraging reading and of developing clear, expository writing. Guidelines are provided for the sequential development of such a journal. Criteria are offered for evaluating fiction and nonfiction books, with examples of annotations featuring style, period or setting of…

A study of children's syntax from a transformational perspective was initiated to explore the following areas: syntactic differences between narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative writing, and the relation of these differences to IQ, sex, and reading comprehension; the relation of syntax content; and the relation of children's…

Argues that comprehension is a problem-solving activity and that different problem-solving schemata exist for different types of texts, both narrative and expository. Suggests that good comprehension occurs when there is a match between the author's schemata and that of the reader, creating a dialogue between the writer and the reader. (JK)

Discourse can be organized in many different ways, two of these being comparison and a collection of descriptions. These two discourse types correspond to schemata that vary in their organizational components, and these differences can be expected to produce differences in the processing of text. For example, research has shown that for young…