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Materials Matter: An Exploration of Text Complexity and Its Effects on Middle School Readers' Comprehension
Amanda C Dahl1, Sarah E Carlson1, Maggie Renken1
1Educational Psychology, Department of Learning Sciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta.
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
|March 30, 2021
Summary
Middle school readers use different comprehension strategies based on science text complexity. Texts with simpler features promote deeper inferences, while complex texts encourage more evaluative and metacognitive comments.
Area of Science:
- Educational Psychology
- Literacy Studies
- Science Education
Background:
- Middle grade readers face challenges with complex science texts, impacting their learning in informational text-dependent educational settings.
- Understanding how students process science texts is crucial for effective reading comprehension instruction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how 7th-grade students comprehend science texts with varying complexity.
- To determine if text complexity features influence the types of comprehension processes students employ.
Main Methods:
- Thirty 7th-grade students participated in a think-aloud task while reading two science texts with distinct complexity profiles.
- Think-aloud protocols were analyzed to code six comprehension processes: connecting inferences, elaborative inferences, evaluative comments, metacognitive comments, and associations.
Main Results:
- Students generated more elaborative and connecting inferences when reading texts with deep cohesion, simple syntax, and concrete vocabulary.
- Texts with referential cohesion, complex syntax, and abstract words elicited more evaluative comments, paraphrases, and metacognitive comments.
Conclusions:
- Text complexity features significantly impact the nature of comprehension processes middle school readers utilize.
- Evaluating science texts for word, sentence, and passage complexity can foster deeper comprehension in middle school students.
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