Awareness of 'Text Structure: Effects on EFL Students" Recall of Expository Text

Abstract

This study examined the effects of text structure awareness and type of text struc• ture on EFL students' recall. It also investigated the levels-effect hypothesis and the relationship between text structure awareness and EFL reading ability Sixty EFL students participated in the study. These students did not show a great deal of background knowledge about the topic of the reading passages They were randomly assigned to four groups. Each group included an equal number of good average, and poor readers. Subjects were further classified as structure-aware or structure-unaware according to their text structure awareness scores.

Each group read one passage once and recalled it twice, immediately and two days after reading. The four passages contained nearly the same ideas presented in four text structures (comparison, causation, problem/solution, or collection of descrip• tions.) Meyer's (1975, 1985) discourse analysis procedure was used to determine the content structures of the passages. Using these content structures as the scoring key, subjects' immediate and delayed recalls were given four sores: a total recall, a super• ordinate idea, a subordinate idea, and a target idea score. Recall protocols were also given a text structure awareness score using four text structure awareness scales.

Statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS package of statistical pro• cedures. The statistical procedures used to test the research hypotheses included one• way ANOVA, repeated measures ANCOVA, Spearman rank-order correlation coeffi• cients, and repeated measures ANOVA.

The main findings of the study were as follows:

First, EFL students were not more aware of one type of text structure compared to the others. Second, text structure awareness had a significant effect on the amount of informa• tion recalled by EFL students; on the other hand, it had no effect on the amount of in• formation they were able to retain over time. Third, text structure awareness had no influence on the quality of information that EFL

students were able to recall or retain over time.

Fourth, the levels-effect hypothesis was not supported; that is, high-level (superordi• nate) ideas were not better recalled by EFL students than low-level (subordinate) i