Reading Abridged Text and Learning Vocabulary Words

200 Pages·2016·2.12 MB·English

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Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center
6-2016
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Audrey J. Fowler
Graduate Center, City University of New York
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EFFECTS OF TWO PREREADING ACTIVITIES ON COMPREHENDING SCIENCE TEXT:
READING ABRIDGED TEXT AND LEARNING VOCABULARY WORDS
by
AUDREY J. FOWLER
A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Educational Psychology in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York
2016
ii
2016
AUDREY J. FOWLER
Some rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 United States License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
iii
EFFECTS OF TWO PREREADING ACTIVITIES ON COMPREHENDING SCIENCE TEXT:
READING ABRIDGED TEXT AND LEARNING VOCABULARY WORDS
by
AUDREY J. FOWLER
This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Educational
Psychology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.
Date
Linnea C. Ehri, Ph.D
Chair of Dissertation Committee
Date
Bruce D. Homer, Ph.D.
Executive Officer
Supervisory Committee:
Helen Leos Epstein Johnson, Ph.D.
Alpana Bhattacharya, Ph.D.
Lois Harris, Ph.D.
THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
iv
Abstract
EFFECTS OF TWO PREREADING ACTIVITIES ON COMPREHENDING SCIENCE TEXT:
READING ABRIDGED TEXT AND LEARNING VOCABULARY WORDS
by
AUDREY J. FOWLER
Advisor: Linnea C. Ehri, Ph.D.
The present study examined the effects of two prereading activities designed to improve fifth-
grade students’ vocabulary learning and comprehension of science textbook content containing
those words. Ninety-three fifth grade students participated in this study. The prereading activities
consisted of students reading an abridged version of the text or receiving instruction on
vocabulary words drawn from the text before reading the full text once. Students receiving these
treatments were compared to a control condition in which students reread the full text passage
twice but did not receive any prereading treatment. Students were grouped by reading ability
levels into above average, average, and below average readers. ANOVAs confirmed that the
treatment/control groups did not differ on any of the pretests. ANOVAs were performed to
examine the effects of the prereading treatments on measures of students’ vocabulary learning
and reading comprehension of the science text. Results showed that students in the vocabulary
training condition and the abridged text condition performed similarly in defining the vocabulary
words and generating sentences containing the words, and both groups outperformed the control
group on these measures. In addition, the vocabulary trained group outperformed the other two
v
groups on a prompted recall measure of text comprehension. Treatment effects conditioned by
reader ability were found on the sentence generation measure. The difference favoring the
vocabulary group over the control group was evident for above-average and average readers but
not for below average readers. The difference favoring the abridged group over the control group
was evident for average and below average readers but not for above average readers. Students in
theabridged text condition performed similarly across all reading levels, whereas students in the
vocabulary and the control conditions differed across reading levels, with performance declining
linearly as reading level declined. Better readers outperformed poorer readers on all the
vocabulary measures and all but one of the reading comprehension measures. Results of this
study suggest that having students read an abridged version of a difficult science text can help
students learn vocabulary words in the text. Teaching students vocabulary words contained in a
difficult science text prior to reading the text can help students learn the vocabulary words and
improve their comprehension of the text.
vi
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:Introduction.................................................................................................... 1
Overview of the Study …………….…….................................................................... 1
Research Questions………………………………………………………………….. 5
Chapter 2: Literature Review ………………................................................................ 8
Scientific Literacy…................................................................................................... 8
Science Education ………..……….……………...................................................... 13
Science Textbooks …..…………………………………………………..…............ 19
Textbook clarity………..…………............................................................... 20
Textbook coherence…………………………............................................... 23
Text Comprehension Theory.........…….................................................................... 28
Activities to Facilitate Reading Comprehension....…............................................... 35
Abridged Text …........................................................................................... 36
Vocabulary Instruction ................................................................................. 38
Rationale and Hypotheses…….................................................................................. 43
Chapter 3: Pilot Study ……………..……................................................................. 45
Pilot Study, Rationale, and Hypotheses……..…….................................................. 45
Method.......................................................................................................... 47
Results and Discussion.................................................................................. 53
Limitations and extended research……........................................................ 57
Chapter 4: Methodology …......…………….…………………………………….. 60
Participants.................................................................................................. 60
Materials and Procedure.............................................................................. 64
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Inter-rater Reliability ……....................................................................... 75
Chapter 5: Results ……..…….….…………..…………………………………….. 85
Comparison of the Treatment Conditions on Screening Variables........... 85
Comparison of the Treatment Conditions on Posttest Measures…........... 88
Chapter 6: Discussion……….….…………..………………………………………. 108
Discussion of Findings …........................................................................ 108
Strengths, Limitations, and Future Research ……................................... 122
Educational Implications ......................................................................... 125
Appendices………………….………........................................................................ 128
References.................................................................................................................. 169
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List of Appendices
Appendix A. Vocabulary Book ……….….……...................….….…................................. 128
Appendix B. Posttest Comprehension Tasks ….................................................................... 142
Appendix C. Vocabulary Knowledge Rubric ….….….….……………………................... 148
Appendix D. List of Vocabulary Terms and Definitions……..……….…............................ 150
Appendix E. Abridged Text Passage ….….….….……........................................................ 152
Appendix F. Full Text Passage ……………......................................................................... 154
Appendix G. Free Recall Rubric ….….….….……............................................................... 155
Appendix H. Prompted Recall Rubric ….….……................................................................ 156
Appendix I. Fountas and Pinnell Text Level Gradient ......................................................... 158
Appendix J. City University of New York IRB Approval ................................................... 159
Appendix K. Parent Consent Letter ….……......................................................................... 161
Appendix L. Student Assent Script....................................................................................... 164
Appendix M. Principal Consent Letter ….….….................................................................. 166
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List of Tables
Table 1. Comparison of Text Readability Levels and Text Properties ………………………. 50
Table 2. Means and Standard Deviations of Students’ Performance on Posttest
Comprehension Measures in the Abridged text, Full text, and Vocabulary training
conditions ……….…………………………………………………………………. 55
Table 3. Comparison of Key Vocabulary Word Lists from Pilot Study and Present Study …. 58
Table 4. Characteristics of Participants ……………………………………………………… 63
Table 5. Inter-rater Reliability, Mean, Standard Deviations, and Intra-class Correlation of
Pretest and Posttest Tasks for One-third of the Sample ……………………............ 78
Table 6. Reading Ability Levels of Participants …………………………….………….……. 82
Table 7. Mean Pretest Performance and Standard Deviations on the Fountas and Pinnell
Measures and Target Vocabulary Measures for the Vocabulary Training,
Abridged Text, and Full Text Reading Conditions……………………………...…. 87
Table 8. Mean Performance and Standard Deviations on Posttests in the Vocabulary
Training, Abridged Text, and Full Text Reading Conditions ………………...…….. 90
Table 9. ANOVA Table of Performance in Posttest Reading Tasks as a Function of
Treatment Condition and Reading Level……………………………………………. 92
Table 10. Percentage of Students Defining Words Correctly in Treatment Conditions on
Immediate Posttest ………………………………………….…….….….….……... 94
Table 11. Separate One-Way ANOVAs on the Sentence Generation Posttest to Pinpoint the
Locus of Differences Given the Significant Interaction Between Treatment
Conditions and Reading Level…………………………………….….……………. 96