The effects of summarization instructions on text comprehension of students with learning disabilities.

The effects of summarization instructions on text comprehension of students with learning disabilities. * Reading is the most frequently mentioned academic subject inwhich students with learning disabilities experience failure (Lindsey& Kerlin, 1979). Although their problems in reading are generallyattributed to poor decoding de��code?tr.v. de��cod��ed, de��cod��ing, de��codes1. To convert from code into plain text.2. To convert from a scrambled electronic signal into an interpretable one.3. skills (McCormick & Samuels, 1979;Perfetti & Hogaboam, 1975), many of these students have difficultyin finding main ideas and important supporting details (Graves, 1986;McGee, 1982; Worden & Nakamura, 1983). Several researchers havereported that poor readers have comprehension deficits textual materialsconsisting only of words that could be decoded accurately (Guthrie,1973; Smiley See emoticon. smiley - emoticon , Oakley, Worthen, Campione, & Brown, 1977). LEARNING STRATEGIES AND COMPREHENSION Failure to employ appropriate learning strategies is often acritical component of learning disabilities (Alley & Deshler, 1979).Students with learning disabilities have often been characterized as"inactive learners" who fail to select, implement, and monitoreffective learning strategies spontaneously (Torgesen, 1982). As groups,poor readers display less efficient textscanning strategies (DiVesta,Hayward, & Orlando, 1979; Garner & Reis, 1981), less efficientcomprehension-monitoring strategies (Bos & Filip, 1984), and lesssensitivity to text structure (Smith & Friend, 1986). Moreover, manysuch students fail to conceptualize con��cep��tu��al��ize?v. con��cep��tu��al��ized, con��cep��tu��al��iz��ing, con��cep��tu��al��iz��esv.tr.To form a concept or concepts of, and especially to interpret in a conceptual way: reading as a search for meaning and,thus, approach the task passively (Bransford, Stein, & Vye, 1982;Paris & Meyers, 1981). The generalized deficits in reading comprehension of many studentswith learning disabilities suggest the importance of systematicinstruction in learning strategies. Three strategies have empiricalsupport for use with poor readers: self-questioning (Clark, Deshler,Schumaker, Alley, & Warner, 1984; Wong & Jones, 1982; Wong,Wong, Perry, & Sawatsky, 1986), paraphrasing (Hansen, 1978; Jenkins,Heliotis, Haynes, & Beck, 1986; Schumaker, Denton, & Deshler,1984), and visual imagery (Clark et al., 1984). SUMMARIZATION Summarization is a fourth learning strategy that can help studentsused deletion deletion/de��le��tion/ (de-le��shun) in genetics, loss of genetic material from a chromosome. de��le��tionn.Loss, as from mutation, of one or more nucleotides from a chromosome. and superordination su��per��or��di��nate?adj.1. Of higher rank, status, or value.2. Logic Of or being the relation of a universal proposition to a particular proposition in which the terms are the same and occur in the same order. to construct and retain a succinct suc��cinct?adj. suc��cinct��er, suc��cinct��est1. Characterized by clear, precise expression in few words; concise and terse: a succinct reply; a succinct style.2. summary of important propositions from text. Kintsch and van Dijk van Dijk can refer to: Arjan van Dijk (born 1987 in Utrecht(, dutch football player Bill van Dijk (born 1947 in Rotterdam), dutch singer Bryan van Dijk (born 1981), dutch judoka Dick van Dijk (born 1946 in Gouda), dutch football player (1978)hypothesized that during the process of comprehension, readers form amacrostructure The notion of macrostructure has been used in several disciplines in order to distinguish large-scale, or 'global' structures, from small-scale, or 'local' structures, that is, microstructures. , or gist, from the microstructure mi��cro��struc��ture?n.The structure of an organism or object as revealed through microscopic examination.microstructureNouna structure on a microscopic scale, such as that of a metal or a cell (i.e., the semanticcontent of sentences in the text). Although some information may berecalled explicitly, it is the text's macrostructure that a readerprimarily remembers and uses as a cue to recall other information fromthe text. Kintsch and van Dijk have specified three macrorules forcondensing con��dense?v. con��densed, con��dens��ing, con��dens��esv.tr.1. To reduce the volume or compass of.2. To make more concise; abridge or shorten.3. Physicsa. information: (a) deletion--any proposition that denotes anaccidental property of a discourse referent ref��er��ent?n.A person or thing to which a linguistic expression refers.Noun 1. referent - something referred to; the object of a reference may be deleted; (b)generalization--an immediate superconcept may be substituted for asequence of micropropositions; and (c) construction--a globalproposition that denotes normal conditions This article is about the philosophical argument; for normal conditions in the sense of standards see the corresponding articles, e.g. Standard conditions for temperature and pressure. , components, or consequencesmay be substituted for a sequence of propositions that makes themexplicit. Application of these macrorules allows the reader to reducethe number of textual propositions and to extract the macrostructure. Brown and Day (1983) proposed five basic rules of summarization.The first two rules require the deletion of unnecessary material. Thethird rule, superordination, requires the substitution of asuperordinate term for a list of items or actions. The fourth and fifthrules deal with topic sentences for each paragraph: selection orinvention of a topic sentence. PURPOSE Students without disabilities have successfully been taught tosummarize expository reading passages (Armbruster, Anderson, &Ostertag, 1987; Bean & Steenwyk, 1984; Hare & Borchardt, 1984;Palincsar, 1982; Rinehart, Stahl, & Erickson, 1986; Taylor, 1982;Taylor & Beach, 1984). Moreover, summarization training was found toimprove reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to assessthe effects of instruction in a summarization strategy on thecomprehension of expository material by students with learningdisabilities. The maintenance of the strategy over time and its transferto a new situation were also investigated. METHODOverview The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, theeffects of summarization strategy on reading comprehension were assessedby contrasting three groups of students: one group of students withaverage reading ability and two groups of students with learningdisabilities who had been assigned randomly to one of two conditions(those trained in summarization and those not trained). In the secondphase, maintenance and generalization gen��er��al��i��za��tionn.1. The act or an instance of generalizing.2. A principle, a statement, or an idea having general application. of the summarization strategy wereassessed for students with learning disabilities who had been trained touse the strategy. Two dependent measures were used: (a) comprehensionscores on criterion tests prepared by the authors and (b) comprehensionscores from a commercially prepared, norm-referenced reading test(MacGinitie, 1978). Subjects Four learning disabilities resource teachers in rural centralPennsylvania nominated 63 sixth-through ninth-graders who had beenclassified as learning disabled and were adequate decoders but poorcomprehenders. To ensure that these were students who had difficulties in readingcomprehension, they were required to meet for additional criteria.First, in order to test decoding skills, students had to read a 200-wordexpository passage written at the fourth-grade level with 90% accuracy.Second, students' standardized scores on the reading comprehensionsubtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test had to be at least 2 yearsbelow grade level but not lower than Grade 4. (This criterion was set asthe minimum acceptable comprehension skill for instructional purposesand was consistent with the minimum standards established for trainingin learning strategies at the Institute of Research in LearningDisabilities, University of Kansas The University of Kansas (often referred to as KU or just Kansas) is an institution of higher learning in Lawrence, Kansas. The main campus resides atop Mount Oread. .) Third, students' performanceson reproduction of main ideas, a summarization measure, were required tobe below 40%. Fourth, students' performance on two criterion testsof comprehension was required to be below 40%. Each criterion testconsisted of 10 multiple-choice questions on an expository passage. Twodifferent expository passages were used to control for subjects'familiarity with the content material. Participants were 30 students with learning disabilities in Grades6 through 9 from three different schools in two school districts, whomet the criteria previously specified. These students were stratified stratified/strat��i��fied/ (strat��i-fid) formed or arranged in layers. strat��i��fiedadj.Arranged in the form of layers or strata. byreading levels on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test and then randomlyassigned to experimental and control groups. Table I containsdescriptive information for the students in these two groups. The groupsappeared equivalent on chronological age chron��o��log��i��cal agen. Abbr. CAThe number of years a person has lived, used especially in psychometrics as a standard against which certain variables, such as behavior and intelligence, are measured. , grade placement, WechslerIntelligence Scale for Children-Revised intelligence quotients, andGates-MacGinitie reading performance.Means and Standard Deviations for Chronological Age, Grade Placement, Intelligence Quotients, and TABLE 1 Reading Performance for Students With Learning Disabilities Experimental Group Control Group (n = 15) (n = 15)DescriptiveInformation Mean (SD) Mean (SD)CA 14.33 (1.11) 14.70 (1.58)Grade 7.53 (1.93) 7.20 (1.04)FSIQ 94.13 (8.95) 95.53 (11.13)VIQ 88.67 (10.74) 90.27 (11.87)PIQ 100.73 (10.23) 98.07 (10.95)NCE 28.00 (4.18) 30.02 (3.90)ORA (%) 92.53 (1.89) 92.80 (1.83)Note: CA = Chronological Age; FSIQ = Full Scale IQ;VIQ = Verbal Scale IQ; PIQ = Performance Scale IQ;NCE = Normal Curve Equipment Score on Gates-MacGinitieComprehension Subtest; ORA = Oral ReadingAccuracy. To provide some normative data on the comprehension tests used inthis study, 15 average readers formed a normal comparison group. Thisgroup was drawn from Grades 6 through 9 in proportion to the studyparticipants in these grades. These students were not enrolled in anyremedial or accelerated reading program. According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. their teacher,they were reading at, or slightly above, their grade level. Materials Instructional Materials. A separate set of 10 short paragraphs wasdeveloped to teach students each of the five summarization rules. Eachset of paragraphs focused exclusively on a different rule. In additionto the paragraphs used to teach the specific summarization skills, sixexpository passages were used to train the students to apply thesummarization rules in concert. Passages from Timed Readings Series(Spargo, Williston, & Browning, 1980) were modified to ensure thatthe various summarization rules could be applied. Therefore, lists ofitems/events were added to allow superordination; topic sentences weremanipulated to allow their selection or invention; and to allowdeletion, some sentences were paraphrased and added, as were trivialdetails. The readability of the passages ranged from 4.0 to 4.6,according to the Fry (1977) formula; passages ranged in length from 400to 470 words. Testing Materials. Six expository passages similar to thoseemployed for training were prepared for use as pretest pre��test?n.1. a. A preliminary test administered to determine a student's baseline knowledge or preparedness for an educational experience or course of study.b. A test taken for practice.2. , posttest post��test?n.A test given after a lesson or a period of instruction to determine what the students have learned. , anddelayed posttest. For each passage, 10 multiple-choice comprehensionquestions were constructed. These questions were of two kinds: fivecondensation questions (assessing comprehension of main ideas, cause andeffect relationships, concepts, and inferences) and five factualquestions (to assess explicitly stated facts). Further, alternate formsof the comprehension subtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test wereadministered to all students with learning disabilities before trainingand to the experimental group after the training. Testing Procedures The order of presentation of four passages was balanced acrossstudents and across pretest-posttest conditions so that a passage wouldbe used as a pretest for some students and posttest for other students.Pretest and posttest data were collected on two passages per conditionfrom all students; only one passage was tested per day. Thus, pretestingrequired 2 days, as did posttesting. Each student was given a taperecorder tape recorder,device for recording information on strips of plastic tape (usually polyester) that are coated with fine particles of a magnetic substance, usually an oxide of iron, cobalt, or chromium. The coating is normally held on the tape with a special binder. ad a packet containing the expository passage, pencils, redpen, and scratch paper Noun 1. scratch paper - pad for preliminary or hasty writing or notes or sketches etc; "scribbling block" is a British termscratch pad, scribbling blocknotepad - a pad of paper for keeping notes . On the pretest, students were told whatsummarization is and were instructed to read the passage, to underline underlinean animal's ventral profile; the shape of the belly when viewed from the side, e.g. pendulous, pot-belly, tucked up, gaunt. the important sentence in pencil, and to cross out the unimportant un��im��por��tant?adj.Not important; petty.unim��portance n. sentences with the red pen. On the posttest, the students were askedonly to form a summary. On both pretest and posttest, students were toldto use their marked passage or rough notes to construct and tape-recordtheir summaries. In addition, students were required to answer the 10multiple-choice questions per passage. Finally, comprehension scoresfrom the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test were available for students withlearning disabilities from their earlier screening. Using the same procedures as used for the posttest, students in theexperimental group were again tested to assess maintenance of thesummarization strategy. At this time, the students in the experimentalgroup were also tested for generalization. To assess generalization ofthe strategy, the resource room teachers were requested to administer analternate form of the comprehension subtest of the Gates-MacGinitieReading Test to students in the experimental group. The order ofadministration of the delayed posttest and test for generalization wasrandomized ran��dom��ize?tr.v. ran��dom��ized, ran��dom��iz��ing, ran��dom��iz��esTo make random in arrangement, especially in order to control the variables in an experiment. across students. The delayed posttest was conducted between25 to 36 days (median = 29) after training. Instructional Procedures To attribute changes in comprehension to instruction insummarization, we found it necessary to ensure that the students learnedthe strategy. Consequently, a mastery-learning paradigm (Bloom, 1976)was used to guarantee that each student in the experimental group hadacquired the five summarization rules developed by Brown and Day (1983):(a) superordination, (b) deletion of redundant information, (c)selection, (d) invention, and (e) deletion of unimportant information.These students received training and guided practice in summarizing thecontents of expository passages orally because the poor written-languageskills of many of these students (Cicci, 1983; MacArthur & Graham,1987) could interfere with summarization. Thirty-five to 40-minute training sessions were conducted withsmall groups of 3 to 4 students each in the learning disabilitiesresource room. the total amount of time required for training (notincluding pretesting and posttesting time) ranged from 6.5 to 11 hours.To decrease the threat to the integrity of the independent variable,scripted formats were used. Training was based on the principles of explicit or directinstruction (Pearson, 1984; Rosenshine, 1986; Rosenshine & Stevens,1984): explicit explanation of the rules, modeling the strategy, guidedpractice in controlled materials, monitoring with corrective feedback,and independent practice. In the first session, the senior authorprovided the students with a rationale for learning the summarizationstrategy, presented examples of situations in which it could be used,and informed them about anticipated results. Then she described andmodeled the first rule (superordination). Students were provided with aset of 10 paragraphs developed exclusively for that rule, and theypracticed the rule until they reached criterion performance. Students were trained similarly in subsequent sessions to criterionon each rule of summarization. In each session, the rules learned in theprevious sessions were reviewed prior to teaching a new rule. For eachrule, a different performance criterion was established for mastery. Forsuperordination and selection of topic sentences, the criterion was setat 100% accuracy on two consecutive paragraphs because these tasks wererelatively simple. For deletion of redundancies, invention of topicsentences, and deletion of unimportant information, the criterion wasset at 80% accuracy on two consecutive training pararagphs. After eachrule was mastered in isolation, students received instruction in thecombined use of the five rules. Initially during these instructionalsessions, subjects were not required to form a summary. In the last sixsessions, students were asked to construct oral summaries of theexpository passages using all five rules. They received feedback ontheir summarization performance for each session. Students practicedforming summaries until an evaluation of their summaries indicated thatthey had reached mastery on all five rules. The instruction was also designed to increase the student'srole gradually over the course of the training. In the beginning, theresearcher had the responsibility for direct instruction. However, asthe students learned the summarization rules, they were givenincreasingly greater responsibility. By the end of the training,students had assumed responsibility not only for practicing the rulesbut also for checking that each rule had been applied. RESULTSEffect of Training on Comprehension Pretest and posttest raw scores on the multiple-choicecomprehension tests and Normal Curve Equivalents from theGates-MacGinitie comprehension subtests are displayed in Table 2.Performances of the three groups on multiple-choice condensation andfactual questions were analyzed using a 3 (Groups) x 2 (kinds ofquestions) x 2 (Test time) analysis of variance (ANOVA anovasee analysis of variance.ANOVAAnalysis of variance, see there ) with repeatedmeasures. The summary of this ANOVA is presented in Table 3. Because thethree-way interaction was significant, F (2, 42) = 15.13, p <.001,Pretest to posttest x Group interactions were examined separately foreach dependent comprehension measure. Interactions for condensation andfactual questions appear in Figures 1 and 2. [Tabular Data 2 and 3Omitted] Follow-up tests (Tukey's Wholly Significant Differences, WSD WSD Word Sense Disambiguation (computational linguistics)WSD Web Services on Devices (Information Technology)WSD Water Supplies Department (Hong Kong))indicated that for both condensation and factual questions, theperformances of the control and the normal comparison groups remainedessentially the same (p <.05) from pretest to immediate posttestconditions. There were no differences (p <.05) between the controland experimental groups' performances on condensation and factualquestions on the pretest, whereas both groups of students with learningdisabilities had significantly lower means than the normal comparisongroup. However, on the immediate posttest, the experimental group'sperformance was significantly greater than that of the control andnormal comparison group's on condensation questions. Theexperimental group's performance was also significantly greaterthan of the control group but equal to the normal comparisongroup's performance on factual questions. Maintenance ofComprehension Skills The experimental group's comprehension performance 4 weeksafter termination of training was compared with their performance on theimmediate posttest (Table 2). On condensation questions, the smalldifference observed (delayed posttest -- immediate posttest = 0.60) wasnot significant, t (28) = 1.46, p > .68. Similarly, for factualquestions, the small difference observed (0.14) was not significant, t(28) = 0.41, p > .68. Thus it can be inferred that the studentsmaintained their use of summarization skills, and this resulted inmaintenance of high performance on both kinds of comprehensionquestions. Generalization of Summarization Skills An alternate form of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test wasadministered to the experimental group to check for generalization ofsummarization skills to reading passages different from the controlledmaterials used during the training. If generalization occurred, thensubjects' comprehension performance on Form 2 of theGates-MacGinitie Reading Test would be significantly greater than theirperformance on Form 1 administered during the pretest phase. A t-testfor dependent samples indicated that the observed difference (9.73) onthe alternate forms of the Gates-MacGinitie was significant, t (28) =5.22, p <.001. From these results, generalization of summarizationskills to the new reading material can be inferred. DISCUSSION These results indicate that students with learning disabilities canbe trained to use summarization rules, that the acquired skills aremaintained, and that spontaneous use of these rules is generalized.These findings are consistent with previous research conducted withstudent without disabilities. Several researchers have reported thatsummarization training improved free recall (Taylor & Beach, 1984;Wong et al., 1986) and cued recall (Armbruster, Anderson, &Ostertag, 1987; Bean & Steenwyk, 1984; Palincsar, 1982; Rinehart etal., 1986; Taylor, 1982; Taylor & Beach, 1984). Further, researchersfound that inducing students to write a sentence summarizing the meaningof each paragraph in a text also facilitated recall compared to acontrol reading condition (Bretzing & Kulhavy, 1979; Linden Linden, city, United StatesLinden,city (1990 pop. 36,701), Union co., NE N.J., in the New York metropolitan area; inc. 1925. During the first half of the 20th cent. &Wittrock, 1981). Though ample research supports summarization as acomprehension-fostering strategy, relatively few researchers havestudied the differential effects of summarization training on differenttypes of questions. In the present study, summarization training waseffective for both condensation and factual questions. The performanceof the students with learning disabilities was comparable to that ofaverage readers on factual questions, but exceeded the performance ofaverage readers on condensation questions. These findings closely parallel those of Palincsar (1982), whofound that explicit instruction in summarizing, questioning, clarifying,and predicting enhanced comprehension scores for text-explicit,text-implicit, and script-implicit questions. Moreover, she found thegreatest gain occurred for text-implicit questions. Because hertext-implicit questions are comparable with our condensation questions,summarization's greater impact on text-implicit questions is alsoreplicated. As a final note, the resource room teachers reported that studentswere using the instructed summarization rules spontaneously in differentcontent areas. Given these student gains, the extensive amount of timerequired to train students with learning disabilities in a learningstrategy appears justified. REFERENCESAlley, G., & Deshler, D. (1979). Teaching the learning disabledadolescent: Strategies and methods. Denver, CO: Love. Armbruster, B. B.,Anderson, T. H., & Ostertag, J. (1987). Does textstructure/summarization instruction facilitate learning from expositorytext? Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 331-336. Bean, T. W., &Steenwyk, F. L. (1984). The effect of three forms of summarizationinstruction on sixth graders' summary writing and comprehension.Journal of Reading of Behavior, 16, 297-307. Bloom, B. S. (1976). Humancharacteristics and school learning. New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. 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JournalEducational Psychology, 74, 633-641. MEENAKSHIGAJRIA (CEC (Central Electronic Complex) The set of hardware that defines a mainframe, which includes the CPU(s), memory, channels, controllers and power supplies included in the box. Some CECs, such as IBM's Multiprise 2000 and 3000, include data storage devices as well. NY Federation)is an Assistant Professor of Special Education in the Division ofTeacher Education at St. Thomas Aquinas College For other schools named after St. Thomas Aquinas, see .Saint Thomas Aquinas College is a private four-year, liberal arts college in Rockland County, New York that occupies a forty-eight acre campus. , Sparkill, New York Sparkill is a hamlet in Rockland County, New York, within the town of Orangetown. It contains the Rockland Country Club and Route 9W passes through it.The town contains the private college of St. Thomas Aquinas College. .JOHN SALVIA salvia:see sage. salviaAny of about 700 species of herbaceous and woody plants that make up the genus Salvia, in the mint family. Some members (e.g., sage) are important as sources of flavouring. (CEC #405) is a Professor of Special Education and the Headof the Department of Educational and School Psychology and SpecialEducation at Pennsylvania State University Pennsylvania State University,main campus at University Park, State College; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1855, opened 1859 as Farmers' High School. , University Park.