Discourse Structure and College Freshmen's Recall and Production of Expository Text

This study examined the effects of providing students with instruction and practice in a discourse structure reading and writing strategy focused on main ideas, supporting ideas, and central ideas which summarize the thrust of both main ideas and supporting ideas. Participants, 126 university freshmen in six intact reading and study skills classes, were assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (a) two experimental groups that received instruction and practice in the discourse structure summarization procedure after reading history texts; (b) two conventional groups that received instruction and practice in answering and discussing questions after reading history texts; or (c) two control groups that received no special instruction. Results indicated that the experimental and conventional groups recalled significantly more of two posttest passages than the control group, that the experimental group recalled significantly more of one of the two posttest passages than the conventional group, that the experimental and conventional groups answered significantly more short answer questions on the posttest passages than the control group, and that the experimental group received significantly higher scores on the posttest writing assignment than the control group.