My child is struggling 
Now that my child has 
What are the contributions of text structures to reading comprehension?
Skills in discerning and using text structures (the way reading material is organized) are important to understanding texts. Students with LD have trouble learning about the structures of stories. In addition, they typically recall less about stories they've read and cannot easily identify the important information in stories. The most useful text structure is referred to as story grammar, which is the way narrative texts are organized. That is, there are characters, a setting, problems, solutions to the problems, etc. Students with LD know less about narrative text structure than other students. This lack of knowledge interferes with comprehension. Fortunately, narrative text structure can be taught, and when it is, comprehension improves.
Expository writing, the kind of texts found in newspapers and history books, for example, presents LD students with even greater challenges. Expository writing typically contains a variety of organizational or text structures that are more difficult to identify. Thus, the tactics that may help when reading stories, such as identifying the main story elements and processing them, are often less effective with expository texts.
Peer-assisted learning strategies (PALS) improve comprehension and oral reading skills. In addition to having students reread text, PALS also has children work directly on comprehension by summarizing what they've read, identifying the most important information, and predicting what may happen next.
Although peer-assisted learning has shown strong benefits, additional research is necessary to determine whether peers have the skills to explain to another student how they handle the difficulties they encounter while reading. It's clear that students can help with practice and that practice is essential for internalizing strategies, but it's not clear to what extent proficient readers can actually teach less proficient readers.
Recommendations
Reading comprehension interventions are among the most effective interventions among children with LD.
Students with LD need to learn an array of strategies to enhance their understanding of the narrative and expository material they read.
With regard to expository text, more emphasis should be placed on a fluid approach to self-monitoring skills. Too few studies have looked at ways to improve comprehension of expository text. New areas of research are emphasizing that comprehension of expository text should focus on helping students use an array of strategies flexibly rather than having them adhere rigidly to text structure approach, as they might while reading a narrative text or story.
It appears that more successful interventions teach kids multiple strategies with the goal of having them internalize the strategies. Limited evidence suggests that internalization occurs with more intense interventions-usually longer and more frequent instructional times.
Socially mediated instruction, of which peer-assisted learning strategies (PALS) is one example, seems to hold considerable promise. In these situations, students learn to process verbally with a peer or group of peers what they've read verbally. After reading a passage, for example, students or a student and a teacher discuss the content of the passage, ask each other questions about it, and in narrative texts, predict what may happen next.
Frequent, ongoing discussions about the meaning of the text, in which the teacher models the array of strategies and tools that good readers use to make sense of text, is a promising approach to reading comprehension instruction.
Finding ways to help students generalize their newly acquired reading comprehension skills is essential. It's important to learn how these skills can be transferred to other academic areas and what needs to be done to make sure that students either continue using the specific strategies they've learned after the instructional intervention ends or internalize the essential parts of the strategy so that improvements in reading comprehension continue.
To date, student learning occurs on measures aligned to the focus of the intervention. So, if students learn to make predictions, for example, they tend to do quite well on tasks that ask them to make predictions. These types of closely aligned measures are called experimenter developed measures. When measures are not closely aligned to the specific focus of the intervention, as is typically the case with standardized measures, the learning outcomes are less impressive. One goal of reading comprehension research is to develop intervention approaches that have a larger impact on standardized measures, which suggest a more generalized or broad-based effect of the intervention.
This document was prepared for the Keys to Successful Learning Summit held in May 1999 in Washington, D.C. Keys to Successful Learning is an ongoing collaboration sponsored by the National Center for Learning Disabilities in partnership with the Office of Special Education Programs (US Department of Education) and the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (National Institutes of Health).
The purpose of this initiative is to translate research and policy on learning disabilities into high standards for learning and achievement in the classroom, and to take action at the local, state and federal levels to ensure that all students, including those with learning disabilities, are afforded the highest quality education.
Keys to Successful Learning is supported by a coalition of national and regional funders as well as a broad range of participating education organizations.
