Prior research has examined the impact of different cognitive predictors on students' expository and narrative text comprehension. It has become apparent that some cognitive variables predict text comprehension in both genres, while some are genre-specific predictors. However, the effect of reading motivation on expository and narrative text…

Many adolescent readers experience difficulties comprehending informational text, which may result from underlying difficulties with foundational skills (e.g., word recognition and fluency), knowledge demands (e.g., background, text structure, and vocabulary), and/or reading motivation. Supplemental interventions for adolescents targeting only…

The Chilean curriculum for writing education includes five paradigms: "cultural," "macro-linguistic," "micro-linguistic," "procedural," and "communicative." The implementation of such a poly-paradigmatic curriculum can occur in multiple ways. Therefore, we analyzed classroom practices with two…

This study evaluated the construct validity of six scoring traits of an automated writing evaluation (AWE) system called "MI Write." Persuasive essays (N = 100) written by students in grades 7 and 8 were randomized at the sentence-level using a script written with Python's NLTK module. Each persuasive essay was randomized 30 times (n =…

Background: The purpose of this study was to examine how skilled adolescent readers draw on their prior knowledge of multimodality and narrative text structure when navigating an intentionally designed digital narrative text. We know that skilled middle-school readers have been taught narrative text structure and that adolescents who use the…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether teaching students about the structure of a text would be associated with improved reading comprehension. Science texts were used with the intention of adding to what is known about content-area reading comprehension. To investigate the effects of teaching science text structure, a reading…

The ability to comprehend science texts is not only an academic skill but a life skill. Currently, however, the majority of students across grade levels in the United States are reading below grade level "and" have science achievement below grade level. The text structure strategy, a reading comprehension strategy in which students are…

A novel instrument, the Features of Excellent Arguments task (FEXA), was developed to elicit adolescents' judgments about argumentative essays displaying to varying degrees features characteristic of strong persuasive writing: academic language, rich evidence, multiple perspectives, and rhetorical appeal. We collected students' categorical choices…

Explicit signals of important relationships in expository texts can provide efficient processing instructions for readers with strategic knowledge about text structures. However, such signal words do not help readers without strategic knowledge about use of text structures and signal words. This study provided the first detailed investigation…

Despite a plethora of research on the utility of drama in the foreign language classroom (e.g., Boudreault, 2010; Gorjian, Moosavinia, & Jabripour, 2010; Zafeiriadou, 2009; Ziltener, 2011), less research addresses its effect on skill development (e.g., Al-Rabadi & Bataineh, 2015; Bataineh, Al-Rabadi, & Smadi, 2013). This study examines…

This study examined the thinking processes students engage in while constructing graphic representations of textbook content. Twenty-eight students who either used graphic representations in a routine manner during social studies instruction or learned to construct graphic representations based on the rhetorical patterns used to organize textbook…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of two comprehensive argumentative writing interventions--Text Structure Instruction (TSI) and Text Structure Revision Instruction (TSRI)--on the eighth-grade students' ability to compose convincing essays that include structural elements of argumentative discourse. Both treatment groups…

Reading comprehension in the content areas is a challenge for many middle grade students. Text structure-based instruction has yielded positive outcomes in reading comprehension at all grade levels in small and large studies. The text structure strategy delivered via the web, called Intelligent Tutoring System for the Text Structure Strategy…

In the late 1970's, Durkin's landmark study showed that less than 1% of elementary classroom reading instruction was dedicated to comprehension strategies because teachers were not explicit in their instruction. This qualitative study explored the types of questions posed by elementary and middle school teachers to elicit students' responses and…

Most studies on narrative competence have focused on monolingual subjects, and there are very few studies which address this issue in bilingual subjects dealing with two language systems. In the present case study we analyzed and compared the textual and narrative written skills of three deaf and three hearing adolescents attending eighth grade at…