Text Effects on Main Idea Comprehension

Abstract

IN TWO STUDIES the authors examined the effects of selected text features on students' main idea comprehension. Seventy-five fourth-grade, 78 sixth-grade, and 107 eleventh-grade students in the United States participated in the studies. In Study 1, students were asked to identify the main ideas of two kinds of text with a listing structure: contrived instructional texts, and less constrained texts like those in content area textbooks. In Study 2, the same students identified the main ideas of texts of four different structures: listing, sequence, cause/effect, and comparison/ contrast. In half of the texts of each structure, the main idea was explicit; in the other half, it was implicit. Students in both studies inferred significantly fewer correct main ideas for the less constrained texts than for the contrived texts. The authors suggest that students who have been taught to identify main ideas using only contrived texts such as those found in basal reader skills lessons will have difficulty transferring their main idea skills to naturally occurring texts. Thus, instruction in main idea should include the opportunity for students to practice applying their skills to naturally occurring texts.

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