Making Reading More Difficult: A Degraded Text Microworld for Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies

Abstract

The purpose of educational microworlds, broadly conceived, is to permit focused learning of a part within a context that preserves essential characteristics of the whole. We investigated a microworld intended to provide opportunities for more focused learning of reading comprehension strategies than are provided by normal text reading. The microworld consisted of texts degraded by blanking out every third letter. Study 1, using thinking-aloud procedures, showed that gifted seventh-grade students used meaning-based strategies similar to those identified with skilled reading comprehension, provided they were required to identify the topics of degraded texts before attempting to decode them. Study 2 showed that average seventh graders did not use such strategies spontaneously, but could be taught to do so, and that the instructed group significantly improved its ability to read degraded text. Study 3 tested transfer to comprehension of normal text. Significant transfer was found for a group in which meaning-based strategies were explicitly taught and practiced through reciprocal peer tutoring but not for a group that had comparable practice in decoding degraded text without strategy instruction.