EXPLORING COMPREHENSION STYLE: A STUDY OF TWELFTH-GRADE READERS\u27 TRANSACTIONS WITH TEXT

This study examined the comprehension processes of 21 twelfth-grade students as they constructed the meanings of three transactional (non-fictive) texts. The primary goal was to describe individual differences in in-process reading comprehension style, particularly responses to comprehension difficulties encountered while reading. Students selected for the study attended the same school and had similar socio-economic and educational backgrounds; however, their scores on the Verbal SAT differed widely. The texts selected were similar in function and structure but differed in topic, length and tone; they were deliberately chosen to be difficult for these readers. Students participated in five one-to-one sessions in which they talked aloud their thoughts as they read each sentence. Students\u27 oral texts were then transcribed and a coding system was derived inductively from these protocols. The resulting analytic system, Types of Moves, contains six major categories of moves with 21 subcategories. Moves correspond to the readers\u27 statements or questions, or parts of statements or questions; they refer to what the reader is doing as he/she makes his/her way through the text, sentence by sentence. Such analysis makes it possible to determine consistency in patterns of moves and to examine particular sequences of moves (strategies) initiated in response to doubt or to a failure to understand some aspect of the text. Protocols were analyzed using Types of Moves and the resulting data was examined in two phases. First, correlations were computed for all subjects relating each category to all other categories, to holistic scores of comprehension, and to SAT scores and grades. Then, six students were selected for detailed analyses of their reading processes. Findings reveal that readers differed from each other in their frequency and patterns of moves and that individual readers were highly consistent in their use of moves across passages. Readers were found to use different strategies in responding to doubt and to hold contrasting notions of the author-reader relationship. Variations in comprehension style occurred among readers of comparable tested reading ability, lending support to a conceptualization of comprehension style not as a set of abilities inherent in readers, but as a complex response to a reading transaction or event