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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of prereading interventions on learning disabled adolescents ' ability to monitor their comprehension during reading and to recognize passage information after reading. Three prereading conditions were employed: selfquestions only; structured overviews and self-questions; and a control condition. A second purpose was to examine differences between the self-questions only and the structured overviews and self-questions groups in the number and types of questions generated. Participants in the study were 54 learning disabled high school students. The materials consisted of two expository passages with embedded errors and a passage recognition measure. Results indicated that the structured overviews and self-questions subjects performed significantly better than either the self-questions only or the control subjects in their ability to detect errors during reading. The recognition measure showed that the control group recognized less passage information than the two prereading conditions. Qualitative analyses of questions generated also demonstrated that there were differences between the structured overviews and selfquestions group in the number and types of questions generated. These results suggest that learning disabled students ' active involvement with text can be facilitated with a brief prereading activity.

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The Effects of Prereading Activitieson the Comprehension Monitoringof Learning Disabled Adolescents

Abstract

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References