Children's text comprehension: Effects of genre, knowledge, and text cohesion

Rachel Best, Yasuhiro Ozuru, Randy G. Floyd, Danielle S. McNamara

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Our goal in this project is to develop a better understanding of text comprehension exhibited by elementary-school children. The research focused on the role of text genre (narrative and expository text), text cohesion (high or low) and the readers' level of prior world knowledge (assessed using the Woodcock-Johnson III Academic Knowledge test). Sixty-four students in the fourth grade read four texts, including one high-cohesion and one low-cohesion text from each genre. Comprehension of each text was assessed with 12 multiple-choice questions, including both local questions (focusing on specific information contained in one or two sentences) and global questions (focusing on general themes). Children showed better comprehension of the narrative than expository texts, but this advantage appeared only on global questions. There was a benefit of higher knowledge, but only for the expository texts. The benefits of cohesion were greatest for narrative text comprehension and on global questions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationICLS 2006 - International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Proceedings
Pages37-42
Number of pages6
StatePublished - Dec 1 2006
Externally publishedYes
Event7th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, ICLS 2006 - Bloomington, IN, United States
Duration: Jun 27 2006Jul 1 2006

Publication series

NameICLS 2006 - International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Proceedings
Volume1

Other

Other7th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, ICLS 2006
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBloomington, IN
Period6/27/067/1/06

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science (miscellaneous)
  • Education

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