Improving L2 reading and summarising skills through explicit instruction in text structure

Abstract

This study investigates whether teaching text structure as a post-reading and pre-writing strategy results in improved reading comprehension. First-year college students (n=41) from two intact English One classes participated in the study, with the experimental group receiving strategy training exercises. Independent raters rated the students' summaries and the scores of the two groups were compared by means of t-tests. The results show that the post-test summaries of the experimental group were rated significantly higher while no change was observed in those of the control group. This suggests that teaching outlining and raising L2 learners' awareness of text structure results in improved comprehension and more detailed and organized summaries.