This study investigated whether stating the instructional objectives at the beginning of instruction would help students structure their own learning. Data came from 24 lessons taught by 13 secondary school teachers to 684 urban and rural adolescent students. Teachers taught different subject lessons in different classes. Students were exposed to four appropriate instructional objectives for one-third of each lesson. They were encouraged to use the objectives by being told that they were for that lesson. However, one randomly positioned objective was not used in that lesson. At the end of each lesson, students were asked to recall the four objectives and identify which one was not used. Of the 235 students who remembered all four instructional objectives, 70 could not identify which instructional objective had not been used. The results suggest that memorization of all four objectives, without the ability to identify which one was not used during instruction, indicates that the instructional objectives were not being used as advance organizers for instruction by those 70 students with the highest recall ability. (Contains 40 references.) (SM)