Story Comprehension and Recall of Poor Readers

A study was conducted to identify poor readers and to characterize weaknesses in their knowledge and use of story structure in comprehension and recall. Subjects were 80 year-3 children in Brisbane, Queensland Australia, 20 good readers and 60 poor readers. The poor readers were then divided into relatively homogeneous subgroups, using measures of language-reading comprehension, according to a numerical classification procedure. This procedure helped identify specific weaknesses in their language-reading comprehension. All children listened to three stories and retold the stories under freeand probe-recall conditions. Comparison of recalls between the good readers and each of the subgroups of poor readers showed that poor readers in two subgroups evidenced reduced sensitivity to story structure. The children in these subgroups recalled less of the stories overall, recalled less information from story grammar categories to varying extents, and showed patterns of category recall which differed from those of normal readers. Children in one of the subgroups also displayed poor perception of causal relations across story episode boundaries. These results provide evidence of marked heterogeneity in poor readers' story comprehension and recall. Certain subgroups of poor readers may have qualitatively different problems processing stories, relative to other poor readers, which may require a more concerted approach to instruction in kory structure. (Includes four tables of data and four figures: contains 68 references.) (Author/SR) Iteprockuns supplied by EMS are the bel;I that can be made from the original document. Technical Report No. 611 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN STORY COMPREHENSION AND RECALL OF POOR READERS Ian A. G. Wilkinson University of Auckland John Elkins University of Queensland John D. Bain Griffith University April 1995 CeAer r the StRuly of Re TECHNICAL REP STS (1. (Eng College of Education UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 174 Children's Research Center 51 Gerty Drive Champaign, Illinois 61820 "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) D. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Vice at Educehonot Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL CENTER ( RESOURCEICS I INFORMATION ER This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization otiginaltno WOW changes have been made to trnorove reproductOn Quality o Points 01 view 04 OrontOPS stated in inns docu ment do not necessarily represent offic,e1 OERI position or policy r BEST COPY AVAILABL CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF READING Technical Report No. 611 INDIVIDUAL Mt FERENCES IN STORY COMPREHENSION AND RECALL OF POOR READERS Ian A. G. Wilkinson University of Auckland John Elkins University of Queensland John D. Bain Griffith University