Many studies have demonstrated the facilitating role of rhetorical devices in text comprehension, but there are also studies where rhetorical devices have not shown such effect. The present study sets out to explore whether readers' knowledge of rhetorical devices (that is, rhetorical competence) moderates their effectiveness beyond general…

Many young readers fail to construct a proper mental text representation, often due to a lack of higher-order skills such as making integrative and inferential links. In an eye-tracking experiment among 141 Dutch eighth graders, we tested whether coherence markers (moreover, after, because) improve students' online processing and their off-line…

This experimental, statistical study investigated the effects that Francis Christensen's "Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence" (1967) would have on overall writing quality and the number of subordinate clauses attached to the main independent clauses for more complex sentences in college freshmen's essays. In the experimental group of 42 students,…

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

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…

Explored the effect of giving novice foreign language readers information about the rhetorical structure of an expository text as a text adjunct. Results indicated that an expanded framework is an effective text adjunct for the comprehension of the expository prose. (27 references) (Author/CB)

This book has been written for those who would improve their reading of prose argumentation through practice in analyzing essays, speeches, and learned articles. Part I, "Structural Rhetoric," sets forth the structural relationship of the parts of an argument. Part II, "Textural Rhetoric," describes alterations in the interior organization of…

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…