Effects of Teaching Text Structure in Science Text Reading

The purpose of this study was to determine whether teaching students about the structure of a text would be associated with improved reading comprehension. Science texts were used with the intention of adding to what is known about content-area reading comprehension. To investigate the effects of teaching science text structure, a reading comprehension program called Comprehending Science Texts with Structure (CSTS) was developed and tested using an true experimental design. Importantly, the study was conducted in China with Mandarin-speaking students, with whom there has been a great shortage of reading research. The CSTS program is a 15-lesson reading comprehension program designed to teach middle school students how to comprehend science texts by using three text structure strategies, namely asking generic questions (GQs), using graphic organizers (GOs), and summary writing (SW). A total of 88 sixth grade students participated in this study and were randomly assigned to either the CSTS intervention group or the content-only control group. After the completion of the CSTS program, students’ text structure knowledge and reading comprehension were measured using researcher-designed