An Examination of three Prose Learning Strategies on Reading Comprehension

Advance organizers: Facilitators of recall

“…The advance organizer alone, however, can not guarantee that the best structure is accessed nor that it has control over what is already resident in the activated schema. Although Ausubel, among others (e.g., Holzman et al, 1981;Lenz et aL, 1987;Petersen et al, 1980;Tyler et al, 1983), suggested that less able individuals may benefit more from access to advance organizers, he did not suggest to what level the deficiency may go before advance organizers lose their impact. The research of Peleg and Moore (1982) does not serve to negate the facilitative effect of advance organizers, it merely suggests where a lower limit (in terms of mental ability) may lie.…”

“…Apparently, real world distractions as used by Stallings and Derry (1986) cross that boundary. Petersen et al (1980) considered reading comprehension, as measured by the comprehension portion of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, as an important variable and used it as a covariate in their study. Each subject read three independent essays about the natural history, dispersion, and ancestry of the dog (each passage was 1500 words long).…”

“…The studies considered many different types of reading passages: those as disparate as nursing (Gillies, 1984), computer programming (Mayer, 1978), dogs (Petersen et aL, 1980), fictitious African nations (Rickards and McCormick, 1977), osmosis (Adejumo and Ehindero, 1980), and linguistics (Dinnel and Glover, 1985). Included were passages as long as 5000 words (e.g., Dinnel and Glover, 1985) or as short as 310 words (Tudor, 1986).…”

“…Included were passages as long as 5000 words (e.g., Dinnel and Glover, 1985) or as short as 310 words (Tudor, 1986). Advance organizers ranged from 50 words (Petersen et aL, 1980) to as long as 230 words (Corkill et al 1988a). Subjects ranging in age from junior high (e.g., Peleg and Moore, 1982) and high school (Adejumo and Ehindero, 1980;Tudor, 1986) to college (e.g., Stallings and Derry, 1986;Tyler et al, 1983) were tested.…”

“…Relatively few studies have considered the impact of reading ability as associated with advance organizers. Thus far, in this review, I have cited only one study that has considered reading ability (Petersen et al, 1980). Three additional studies explored the reading ability aspect and found that under certain circumstances advance organizers benefit less-skilled readers.…”