Evaluating Pre-Primer Basal Readers Using Story Grammar

Abstract

The present study evaluated pre-primer basal reading materials using theJohnson and Mandler (1980)story grammar. Three stories from two widely used series were selected and rewritten in accord with the rules of the story grammar. Subjects were 96 first graders who were seen individually and randomly assigned to one of eight conditions. The eight conditions were formed by a 2 × 2 × 2 crossed design. Each of the three conditions in the design had two levels as follows: (a) The story version condition was either story grammar story or basal reader story; (b) the picture condition was either pictures present or pictures absent; and (c) the presentation condition was either oral reading or listening to a tape recording. The following conclusions were drawn: (a) Children who read or listened to story grammar stories had better recall than children who read or listened to basal reader stories; (b) the recall for stories with pictures was not different from the recall for stories with no pictures, with the exception that when pictures were present there were more logical additions to the stories than when pictures were absent; (c) children who listened to stories had better recall on some aspects of recall than children who read stories; and (d) there were no significant differences between the story grammar and basal reader versions on words read per second, words skipped, or reading errors during oral reading.