This article provides a deeper understanding of how young bilinguals constructed meaning with expository texts in an inquiry-based setting over an academic year. An examination of classroom transcripts and analysis revealed how "Viewing" became the most frequently used literacy practice and a cultural tool in the construction of meaning…

Argues for the usefulness of merging experimental and correlational approaches in the study of expository prose comprehension. Reviews studies in recent years. Shows that the correlational approach yields results similar to the experimental literature, and that the vast databanks associated with multiple-choice tests allow exploration of some of…

A study examined the effects of (1) providing students with instruction in a "discourse-structure" reading and writing strategy on college freshmen's recall and comprehension of history textbook passages; and (2) this procedure on the quality of students' expository writing. Subjects, 126 college freshmen, randomly assigned to one of…

Students have been taught to recall specific details, but often are unable to read critically or to grasp the main ideas. (JH)

Designed to assess immediate and delayed comprehension of expository prose, this instrument is a 40-item multiple-choice test composed of open-ended stems, each followed by four nonoverlapping choices. Control of content of the items was based upon an analysis of the accompanying 1,300-word passage on the Kalahari Desert. Validity, reliability,…

Describes four basic features that distinguish narrative from expository discourse and suggests that teachers who recognize those differences can guide their students to use reading strategies appropriate to particular text structures. (HOD)

Concludes that children could attend to texts selectively when reading or listening to expository prose, and when reading, but not in listening to narrative prose. (FL)

Investigates the relationship of reading ability and age to children's recall of expository text after reading and analyzes children's sensitivity to text structure. (MKM)

Reports a study designed to answer the question of whether English as a second language (ESL) reading can be facilitated by explicit teaching of text structure. Results indicate that training on the top-level rhetorical organization of expository texts significantly increased the amount of information that 25 intermediate-level ESL students could…

Reviews previous research on the effects of signals (structural cues that announce or emphasize content or reveal content relationships) on readers' comprehension of expository prose. Concludes that inconsistent results are due to inadequate methodologies that fail to control for confounding variables, such as text length and difficulty, topic…

This study investigated the effectiveness of color coding, accomplished by highlighting, used to help students differentiate between exact meaning (explicit information) and implied meaning (implicit information) in both narrative (short story) and expository texts. Subjects were 78 sixth-grade students randomly enrolled in four language arts…

The effects of four major types of expository text on the comprehension performance of 69 third and 69 sixth graders were investigated. Results suggest that knowledge of discourse types underlies effective expository comprehension and that this ability increases as children reach the upper elementary grades. (BS)

Proposes to examine reading problems by means of discourse analysis of students' translations. The study is based on two previous experiments in which first-year university students translated English texts into their native language (Hebrew or Arabic). (37 references) (Author/VWL)

This report compares a typical newspaper account of an event with other possible ways of narrating the event. It argues that journlists' beliefs about the appropriate format, style, and content for a news story work in concert to obscure the structure of the story and the relations among subparts, and thus serve to thwart their presumed goal in…

A study investigated three issues: (1) differences between two types of rhetorical organization of expository text (problem-solution pattern and collection-of-descriptions pattern) in the reading recall of second-language readers; (2) differences between the two types on reading recall of readers at two levels; and (3) relationship between the…