The Function of Explicit Discourse Knowledge in the Development of Text Representations and Composing Strategies

Abstract

In Study 1, instruction was used with students in Grades 4 and 6 to investigate effects of availability of explicit versus implicit knowledge of discourse structure. Providing labels for the structural components of opinion essays permitted the expression of implicit knowledge, but instruction in analyzing the structural function of text contents was required before discourse structure knowledge yielded more mature performance (including identifying text contents by function, addressing contrary sides of arguments, and avoiding nonfunctional digressions). As predicted, instruction led neither to superior recall of structural plans for own texts nor to higher ratings of text quality. Study 2 replicated with Grade 6, and extended to Grade 10 and adults, the portions of Study 1 that dealt with recall of structural plans. Accuracy of recall increased significantly with grade. Study 2 additionally used thinking-aloud-during-recall tasks to identify mature and immature uses of structural representations. As predicted from models of mature and immature composing strategies, adult protocols showed structural representations mediated through gist, intention, and language. For younger students representations were primarily non-mediated, and those mediations that did occur showed the primary link with structure to be language rather than intentions or gist.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 76 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.