Journal of Literacy Research

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Development of Text-Processing Skills in High-, Average-, and Low-Achieving Primary School Children Marja Vauras, Riitta Kinnunen and Leea Kuusela Journal of Literacy Research 1994 26: 361 DOI: 10.1080/10862969409547859 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/26/4/361

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Journal of Reading Behavior 1994, Volume 26, Number 4

DEVELOPMENT OF TEXT-PROCESSING SKILLS IN HIGH-, AVERAGE-, AND LOW-ACHIEVING PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN

Marja Vauras, Riitta Kinnunen, and Leea Kuusela University of Turku

ABSTRACT This longitudinal study is focused on the development of learning strategies in low-, average-, and high-achieving children from third to fifth grade (i.e., from age 9-10 to age 11-12). Children's comprehension and learning of expository texts were examined on micro-, local-, and global-level processing skills. The aims were to provide a characterization of individual differences in learning strategies, and to depict the development of text learning skills over a critical 2-year period, when children are expected to master basic reading skills and to develop text comprehension skills. The results supported the prediction of gradual increase in higher level processing skills with age. Even though this development was evident also in micro-level processes, the most critical development from age 9 onward took place in local- and global-level processing. However, developmental patterns were dependent on the initial skill and achievement level of a child. Clear progression could be found in average- and high-achieving students' local- and global-level coherence processes and learning strategies. This development was most striking in the extreme group of top-achievers, whereas lowachieving children's skills evidenced slow progression and, compared to others, even relative regression. The same developmental patterns were found in students' grade-point-averages. The present study aimed at examining the development of text-processing skills in low-, average-, and high-achieving primary school children from third to fifth grade within a longitudinal research paradigm. Children's comprehension and learning of expository texts were examined on three levels: micro-, local- and global-

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level text processing. The aims were (a) to provide a detailed characterization of individual differences in the quality of text-processing strategies, and (b) to depict the development of text learning skills over a critical 2-year period, when children are expected to master basic reading skills and to develop fundamental global-level text-processing skills. Children's cognitive development in the early school years is marked by an increasing sophistication in the use of comprehension and learning strategies. By third grade, children are expected to master decoding skills, and to develop comprehension and learning skills that enable them to concentrate more on focal than peripheral text information, to select main ideas for further elaboration, to connect ideas to form a global understanding of the intended meaning of a text, and to retain the essential information effectively for later recall. However, learning from expository texts seems to form a common problem for elementary students. Children as young as 4 years of age may have articulate understanding of main themes and logical sequences of simple narratives and may show rather skilled processing of stories; for example, they are more prone to recall important, causally related units of information than less important units with fewer connections to the central plot (Brown & Smiley, 1977; Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Stein, 1979; Stein & Glenn, 1979). However, when processing of narratives is contrasted with processing of expository texts, elementary students are less successful with expository material (Berkowitz & Taylor, 1981; Taylor & Beach, 1984). Difficulty with expository texts may be due to many factors: expository texts may have greater conceptual density and more unfamiliar concepts and contents, they have less familiar and more variable structures (Cook & Mayer, 1983; Taylor, 1982), and may even lack tight temporal, causal, or logical connectives, especially if they are descriptive texts (Englert & Hiebert, 1984).

THE COMPREHENSION AND LEARNING FROM EXPOSITORY TEXTS AS A COMPLEX, DEVELOPING SKILL Effective comprehension and learning of expository texts requires that a learner engages in an active, multilevel process of meaning construction that involves strategic processes which operate on successively more complex text units (Brown & Day, 1983; van Dijk, 1985; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978). This multilevel construction process is signified with micro-level processes aimed at recapitulating coherent meanings of individual sentences, with local-level processes aimed at making gap-filling inferences to establish connected meanings of propositional microstructures, and finally with global-level processes aimed at forming a generalized representation of the intended text meaning at different levels of importance (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). This process is assumed to involve multiple deletion, selection, generalization, and construction operations in its realiza-

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tion (Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1978). Other inferential processes may further elaborate the content and serve to integrate it into a learner's own knowledge background (E. Kintsch, 1989). In this framework, learning strategies such as holistic integration, hierarchic structuring, or transformation strategies can be seen as global ways of action aimed at fulfilling, in an optional way, these operations in order to condense and retain information in more memorizable form. Developmental research on text processing indicates a general progressive pattern of children's comprehension and learning skills. Even young students from 10 years of age are shown to be sensitive to higher order components of text structure and to adapt their reading accordingly (Brown & Day, 1983; Lorch, Lorch, Gretter, & Horn, 1987; Taylor, 1980; Taylor & Samuels, 1983; Wong & Wong, 1986). Young students' activities are nevertheless immature, and they often use linear, element-by-element processing, rarely engaging in the kind of meaningconstruction processing that characterizes skilled reading (Brown & Day, 1983; E. Kintsch, 1989; Taylor & Samuels, 1983; Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980). With age, however, there is an increasing tendency to make finer discriminations between importance levels in the information structure (Brown & Smiley, 1977; Brown, Day, & Jones, 1983) to show greater sensitivity to text structure and structural manipulations (Danner, 1976; Englert & Hiebert, 1984; Lorch et al., 1987; Taylor, 1980), to use more effective strategies for deleting, selecting, connecting, and generalizing information in summarizing texts (Brown & Day, 1983; Brown, Day, & Jones, 1983; E. Kintsch, 1989), and to apply more higher level strategies of integration, organization, and transformation in learning from texts (Meyer et al., 1980; Vauras, 1991).

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING FROM EXPOSITORY TEXTS This progressive pattern in skill development is not uniform for all students, however, and important individual, qualitative differences have been observed in the way poor and good readers comprehend and learn expository texts. Many children do not progress beyond decoding; they fail to transform simple strategies into more efficient ones, and thus show inferior comprehension and learning skills that may be far behind those of more skilled peers of the same age (cf. Swanson, 1989). In the study by Wong and Wong (1986), for example, above-average, average, and learning-disabled readers from the fifth to seventh grade read short, structurally organized and disorganized descriptive texts both with easy and difficult vocabulary. Learning-disabled children were most sensitive to vocabulary difficulties, allocating more study time to passages with hard vocabulary, whereas above-average readers were most sensitive to the organization of a text, adapting their study time to increasing processing demands in the disorganized passages (Wong & Wong,

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1986). A study by Meyer et al. (1980) indicated that in learning well-organized expository texts the majority of students designated as good readers used the toplevel text structure in their recalls, whereas most poor readers did not. The utilization of top-level structure was related to better recall both in immediate and delayed recall of message units as well as in major and minor details. Converging results were obtained by Taylor (1980) with sixth-grade good and poor readers. These developmental observations of young, and especially poor, readers' processing of expository text may indicate that the more basic processes of decoding and micro-level meaning construction have not yet been fully mastered and automatized. Or, even though these basic skills have been mastered, local-level gapfilling processes may still require conscious attention. Hence, limitations in the amount of available processing resources may interfere with the ability to generate more global-level meaning construction inferences (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1984; E. Kintsch, 1989; Perfetti, 1985). The evidence from more advanced students' and adults' comprehension and learning of difficult prose seems to support the notion that successful macro-level processing depends on sufficient lower-level inferences and constructions. Recent studies suggest that the employment of higher order strategies is not self-evident even for more advanced students and adults. More mature students do not necessarily apply efficient macro-level strategies in summarizing texts (Brown & Day, 1983; Brown, Day, & Jones, 1983; E. Kintsch, 1989; Kurtz & Denhiere, 1989) or in learning from texts (Meyer et al., 1980; Vauras, 1991). Older students and adults are found to resort to lower-level processing especially when confronted with highly unfamiliar, complex, or poorly structured text (Kintsch & Yarbrough, 1982; Vauras, 1991; Vauras, Hyona, & Niemi, 1992). Thus, in situations and tasks where micro-level processes require too much conscious attention, a separation between the levels of text processing may occur resulting in failure to achieve coherent global relationships and understanding of the intended meaning of a text.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS Children's comprehension and learning of texts on the different textual levels is rarely examined in the same study (E. Kintsch, 1989), or, even more rarely, within a longitudinal design. Therefore, in the present study, the development of children's comprehension and the learning of expository texts were examined both on micro- and macro-level text processing during a 2-year period, from the end of Grade 3 to the end of Grade 5, within a longitudinal research paradigm. Answers were sought to four questions: (a) In what respects/levels do text-processing skills develop over a critical 2-year period, after the children have acquired basic reading, that is, decoding, skills? (b) What kinds of individual differences in the quality


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of text processing skills exist between and within these three achievement groups? (c) What are the developmental interrelationships between the different levels of text learning processes? (d) How do the children's text processing skills and the development of these skills correlate with general school achievement? With regard to the first general question, we assumed that, on average, by the end of third grade students master the decoding and basic micro-level meaning construction processes (cf. Elley, 1992), and the most significant growth should be observed in more macro-level processes, for example, in the construction of coherent local meanings between propositions and of coherent global meaning of a text. Corresponding development should be reflected in the use of more advanced learning strategies, showing emergence of holistic integration, logical serial or hierarchic structuring, and schema-based transformation (cf. Vauras, 1991). The second hypothesis concerns the comprehension and learning differences between the students differing in their initial, general school attainment. Even if, on average, micro-level meaning construction processes are basically mastered at age 10, significant differences at this level of text comprehension skills may exist between the high- and low-achieving children. Many low-achieving children may still encounter problems even in decoding and in the comprehension of individual propositions, especially in conceptually complex or abstract sentences. If this hypothesis proves valid, the children facing problems in micro-level meaning construction are expected to be able to apply only an atomistic, unilevel, and reproductive approach to learning leading to fragmentary memory representations of the intended text information. If differences between high- and average-achieving students occur (cf. Meyer et al., 1980; Wong & Wong, 1986), we expect them to be found on more global-level processes. The third hypothesis is related to the above arguments and the assumption of hierarchic organization of comprehension and learning skills. As argued, for example, by van Dijk & Kintsch (1983) and E. Kintsch (1989), it is hypothesized that successful macro-level processing presupposes adequate micro-level and local coherence processes. The occurrence of higher order learning strategies, such as holistic integration or hierarchic structuring, should be evident in performance only after lower level comprehension processes have been sufficiently developed. Finally, as a completion to the second hypothesis, the last hypothesis deals with the assumption of a widening achievement gap between the low- and highachieving children (cf. Juel, 1988; Stanovich, 1986). When increasing achievement demands across the school years are taken into account, there should be an interaction of skill development and school attainment that indicates an increase or maintenance of the general achievement level for those children who show progression in their macro-level text processing skills, and a relative decrease for those children who do not progress beyond decoding or micro-level meaning construction.

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METHOD Subjects Nineteen high-achieving (11 girls, 8 boys), 19 average-achieving (10 girls and 9 boys), and 19 low-achieving children (7 girls, 12 boys), selected from 414 third graders, served as subjects. Subjects were, on average, 9 to 10 years old in the beginning of the study, and 11 to 12 years old at the end of the study. The selection of the 57 subjects in this study was primarily based on teacher interviews and school achievement. In addition, students' reading rate and text comprehension were controlled by separate tasks, including, for example, a cloze test on reading comprehension and the first reading test used in this follow-up study (see Materials section). The teachers were asked to assess every student in their classes as belonging to one of the three categories: poor, average, or good learners. The teachers were asked especially to take into account the students' decoding skills, comprehension and learning skills, and general school achievement. Of the 414 students, the teachers assessed 106 students (26%) as poor, 167 students (40%) as average, and 141 students (34%) as good learners. Teachers were then further interviewed about all the poor students to achieve a more articulate impression of their achievement level. On the basis of interviews and control tasks, some of the poor learners with severe decoding deficits, grave behavioral problems, or above-average performance on control tasks were excluded from further analyses. The subjects participating in this follow-up study were then selected from unconfused samples; also good students with poor or average performance in control tasks mentioned above were excluded from the basic sample of high achievers. Thus the low- and highachieving students in this study both represented about 20% of all 414 students. The grade-point-averages in theoretical subjects for the three groups were: Low achievers, M=6.86, 5D=0.55; Average achievers, M=7.83, 5D=0.42; and High achievers M=8.83,5D=0.34 (the grades ranging from 4 to 10 in the Finnish school system). Design The development of learning strategies was observed in high-, average-, and low-achieving children during a 2-year period. However, all subjects participated only in two test sessions, in the beginning of the study (session 1) and after 2 years (session 5). More frequent data were collected from the extreme groups of 11 topachieving (6 girls, 5 boys) and 11 low-achieving (4 girls and 7 boys) children who participated in five sessions during a 2-year period, with session intervals of 8, 4, 8, and 4 months. Materials Five comparable expository texts (approximately 180 words) on history were prepared. The texts were entitled: (a) Life in the Finnish Countryside at the End of


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the 1800s, (b) Life in Ancient Rome, (c) The Arabian Culture a Thousand Years Ago, (d) The Rise of the Russian Empire, (e) The Decline of the South American Inca State.1 All texts were written on unfamiliar topics for the children (i.e., topics not yet dealt with at school). However, we assumed that the first text was somewhat more familiar to the children, since part of the phenomena described in the text can still be observed in the Finnish country life. An effort was made to control the corresponding messages across the texts with respect to length, semantic, lexical, and syntactic properties. The texts were highly comparable in terms of their schematic structure with one exception. The local coherence structures in the texts differed in terms of propositional relationships: the last three texts were based more on functional and causal relationships and the first two texts were more descriptive in nature. This increased difficulty of the last three texts was deliberate and aimed to reflect, to some extent, the increasing demands of schooling. Procedure In each session during the 2-year period, children were presented one text by an experimenter. In the first session, at the end of the third grade, the text on the Life in the Finnish Countryside was given to all 57 children. In sessions 2 to 4, the texts on the Life in Ancient Rome, Arabian Culture, and the Rise of the Russian Empire were given, in respective order, only to 22 children, that is, to the children in extreme groups. In the last session, at the end of the fifth grade, the text on the Decline of Inca State was given again to all 57 children. In each session, subjects were asked to learn the text as well as possible so that they would be able to write about it afterwards in their own words. Subjects were given 10 minutes for learning, and after reading, they were asked to write a composition from memory (i.e., an essay, on the theme corresponding to the title of the text). Subjects had 15 minutes to complete their essays. Detailed instructions were given to explain the meaning of the recall task, since essays were usually not used as exams at this level of schooling. However, the children were used to writing compositions, and knew the meaning of doing this. The title of the text was repeated prior to recall to serve as a general retrieval cue and as a general organizational base for their essays. Before finishing the recall period, the experimenter made sure that the slow processors were not handicapped because of time restrictions. However, time restrictions seemed to slightly affect only a few of the highachieving children who wrote long essays. Assessment of Learning Strategies The concept learning strategy refers to the qualitatively different ways of acting in which subjects try to acquire new knowledge and skills. In the context of 1. Examples of texts and children's essays can be obtained (as English translations) from the first author.

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learning from texts, our aim has been to understand the qualitatively distinct integrational and organizational processes involved in learning from texts (Vauras, 1991). Learning strategies were analyzed in terms of four strategy variables (integration, structure, transformation vs. reproduction, and reconstruction) on the basis of essay protocols (for a more detailed description and discussion, see Vauras, 1991). Strategies were assessed in all texts. Integration strategies. These strategies reflect a student's attempts to construct and integrate the text content as a whole (cf. Svensson, 1977, 1984). As Svensson has noted with regard to this strategy dimension: "The difference is one between merely delimiting and ordering parts of the material interacted with, compared to integrating parts by the use of some organizing principle" (1984, p. 64). Three integration strategies were specified with regard to degree and comprehensiveness of integration attempts. Essays were always assessed with respect to the extent to which the subject had succeeded in carrying through the strategy; the success of integration (or the coherence of strategy use) was evaluated separately on a 2-point scale (+ and -) relative to each integration strategy in question (cf. the notion of "strategy coherence" by van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Holistic integration: the student attempted to treat the text as a whole by constructing an integrated meaning from the text. The approach is thus holistic: he or she attempted to construct the text content as a whole both within and between the text paragraphs or passages; the details are primarily used to clarify and concretize the main ideas. Meristic integration: the student concentrates on the subsections/paragraphs of the text by integrating ideas within these sections. The approach is thus meristic; he or she constructed the text as distinct subsections by integrating the messages within the paragraphs and subsections, but not within the whole text (e.g., intersection connections, developmental trends, hierarchic or serial interrelationships); the details were primarily used to clarify and concretize the main theme within the subsection. Atomistic integration: the student concentrated on factual knowledge, text-based micropropositions and limited subsections. He or she treated the text as a set of more or less separate items, and did not attempt to construct the text as a whole or as coherent, distinct subsections. The approach was thus atomistic; no attempt was made to integrate the factual knowledge and details as complete meanings, but he or she attempted to integrate indistinct propositions to achieve some limited, individual consequence, description, or definition.

Structure strategies. These strategies reflected the student's way of organizing and structuring the given text (cf. Pask, 1976; see also Meyer et al., 1980; Meyer, 1984). This strategy is complementary to the integration strategy in the sense that the latter reflected the general attempts to integrate the text and the former describes the specific way of organizing the text propositions, for example, the organizing of the text's macrostructure (cf. van Dijk & Kintsch, 1978, 1983; see also


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Svensson, 1984). Strategy differences in structuring were typically found among students who had adopted holistic or meristic integration strategies, whereas this variable differentiated less between the students using an atomistic integration strategy. Multilevel, hierarchic structure strategy: the student attempted to organize the text by ordering the propositions from the different textual macro-levels hierarchically to each other. The attempt to generate the macrostructure can thus be described as "deductive," where the lower level propositions were explicitly connected to the proper higher level propositions. Success in employing this strategy was further evaluated by a 2-point scale: to the hierarchic strategy, a " 1 " or "2" was appended to indicate the macrostructural clarity of the essay. Serial structure strategy: these strategies reflected students' attempts to organize the text serially through temporal, causal, functional, or associative connections. The attempts to construct the macrostructure can thus be described more or less as "inductive," where interconnections would be typically made in the forms of action or process sequences but any attempt at explicit hierarchic structuring was lacking. The level of serial structuring was evaluated by two distinct categories to better connote the macrostructural form of the essay: Logical serial structure strategy: the student connected the propositions serially, typically through logical, temporal, or causal connections. Associative serial structure strategy: the student connected the propositions serially, but typically through associative and/or incomplete temporal connections. The attempt to structure the text information can be described as narrative, lacking any hierarchic organization. Unilevel structure strategy: The students' attempts to organize the text information could not be described as hierarchic or serial. The student attempts to construct a reasonable coherent macrostructure of the text, but the criteria of organization cannot be inferred from the essays. The student equated information from different content levels. Unstructured: the organization of text propositions was almost completely lacking: No attempt to construct a textual macrostructure could be inferred from the essays. Transformation versus reproduction strategies. These strategies reflected the students' attempts to transform versus reproduce the text information as to whether he or she did or did not relate it to previous experience and knowledge (cf. Biggs, 1973, 1976). The quality of transformation/ reproduction was assessed by using a 3-point scale (--, -, +) relative to both strategies in question. The third rating (--) was needed for younger children to classify the essays that reflected almost complete misinterpretation of the text (R—) (these kinds of misunderstandings were rarely found in older students, cf. Vauras, 1991), and in order to rate the essays that reflected very naive or inaccurate transformation (T—). Transformation: Transformations referred to the students' attempts to transform and modify the text information by introducing new facts or ideas, by evaluating

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and criticizing the writer's views, reasoning, or conclusions, by presenting one's own opinions, examples, or applications, and/or by connecting the text information with one's prior knowledge. Thus, the learner attempted to go beyond the given text by actively applying his or her previous world knowledge and experiences. Reproduction: Reproductions were the students' attempts to encode the text information fairly unchanged, and, in extreme cases, to memorize parts of, or all, the information by heart. Reconstruction strategies. The strategies reflected the students' attempts to reconstruct versus imitate the text-base or text structure. For example, an assessment indicating that a student was applying logical, serial structure strategy, does not necessarily mean any active reconstruction with regard to a text structure, but can merely reflect coherent imitation of the schematic structure of a text. Where the strategy dimension transformation/reproduction is concerned with the schemabased inferences, interpretations and knowledge applications, this dimension is concerned with structural transformations. These two transformation dimensions proved to capture rather distinct aspects of reconstruction processes in learning. The reconstruction strategy scale was applied in essays with a fairly coherent macrostructure, and included two discrete categories. (Students assessed as constructing more or less incoherent structures, i.e., all unstructured, and most of the unilevel or associative serial organizations, were either omitted or treated as an additional group in analyses concerning the structural transformation.) Schematic imitation: a student faithfully imitated the schematic structure of a text. Macrostructural reconstruction: a student attempted to actively reconstruct the text base, either to construct a serial or a hierarchic macrostructure. A global strategy efficacy score, ranging from 1 to 14, indicating the general mastery of learning strategies was computed. The score was computed to test general developmental trends in strategy application. A subject was given scores as follows: unstructured and reproduction- scored 0; atomistic-, unilevel structuring, and reproduction- gave 1 point each; atomistic+/or meristic-, associative serial structuring, and reproduction+/or transformation- gave 2 points each; meristic+/ or holistic-, logical serial structuring, and transformation- gave 3 points each; and finally, holistic+, hierarchic structuring, and transformation+ gave 4 points each. Subsequently, 1 extra point was given for coherent Schematic imitation and 2 extra points for Macrostructural reconstruction. Thus, an essay assessed as reflecting an unsuccessful attempt to apply an atomistic, reproductive approach to learning (atomistic-, unstructured, reproduction—) scored 1, and an essay assessed as reflecting a successful attempt to apply holistic, hierarchic, transformative approach to learning (holistic+, hierarchic, transformation+, and macrostructural reconstruction) scored 14. In this scale, even rather minor changes [e.g. from atomistic-,


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unstructured, reproduction— (1) to atomistic-, unilevel, reproduction- (3)] reflected noteworthy qualitative changes in strategy use. Refusals or failures to write an essay (including attempts with just one or two sentences) created a problem for analysis. However, only low-achieving children failed to write an essay (four total refusals). Two of these refusals were at the first session, with children 9 to 10 years old. On the basis of the data concerning these children's cognitive performance at the time, it seemed rather reliable to interpret most of the refusals as a lack of necessary text-processing skills. Children's performance on subsequent tasks were in accordance with this interpretation. To avoid significant loss of data, the refusals were scored point 1 on the general strategy mastery scale, even if a judgement error could be made in some single case. (In qualitative analyses refusals were treated separately.) Rating Procedure and Reliability of Strategy Assessments For assessment, each essay was typed and made anonymous. The first two authors of this study then rated each essay, independently from each other, and separately on each strategy dimension. The two judges were unanimous in more than 80% of cases in the ratings of the strategies, and in more than 75% of cases, if the success rating (+/-) is taken into account. The highest agreement was achieved in transformation strategies, and the lowest in structure strategies. Disagreements were resolved in discussion. Coherence Ratings All essays were further analyzed in terms of their coherence. The semantic coherence of the essays was scored at three textual levels: (a) propositional, microlevel coherence, that is, how coherently, for example, the atomic propositions are organized into a complex text proposition; (b) local coherence, that is, how coherently, for example, the text propositions are organized into a complex macroproposition; and (c) global/macrostructural coherence, that is, how coherently the macropropositions were organized into a comprehensive textual macrostructure (cf. van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Moreover, the syntactic coherence was analyzed at the propositional level. A proposition is taken here as the meaning unit of a sentence (cf. van Dijk & Kintsch 1983). The coherence on each of these levels was rated as follows: Propositional, micro-level coherence. Each sentence of an essay was rated with respect to its coherence; that is, interconnections of relevant atomic propositions in an essay were rated with regard to a text proposition in a given text. Semantic coherence on the propositional level was scored on a 5-point scale, from 0 (absence of semantic coherence, e.g., almost incomprehensible meanings) to 5 (very strong semantic coherence, e.g., sentences with complex, integrated meanings).

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Syntactic coherence on the prepositional level was scored on a 4-point scale, from 0 (absence on syntactic coherence, e.g., sentences with a list of practically unrelated words) to 4 (very strong syntactic coherence, e.g., accurate, syntactically complex sentences). Local coherence. Each set of sentences of an essay was rated with respect to local coherence, that is, interconnections of relevant propositions in an essay were rated with regard to a macroproposition in a given text. As above, the subjects were given 0 to 5 points, depending on the semantic coherence of the macroproposition. The mean scores on the proposition^ and local coherence ratings were computed for each subject. Global coherence. Finally, each essay was rated with respect to macrostructural coherence; that is, the interconnections of macropropositions in an essay were rated with regard to the macrostructure in a given text. The subjects were given a total score, ranging from 0 to 5 with .5 intervals, depending on the semantic coherence of the macrostructure. The scale is illustrated by examples of the critical values: 0=absence of global coherence (e.g., essays lacking any kind of interconnections among macropropositions; or including only one macroproposition) 1 = very weak global coherence (e.g., essays with very vague, loose or erroneous referential ties among macropropositions) 2=weak global coherence (e.g., essays with fairly naive, imprecise or erroneous referential ties among macropropositions) 3=moderate global coherence (e.g., essays with fairly coherent and logical succession of macropropositions, but including some erroneous referential ties, intrusions, or lacking some critical information) 4= strong global coherence (essays with coherent and logical succession of macropropositions, but mainly lacking explicit referential ties among them) 5= (nearly) optimal global coherence (essays with coherent macrostructure in which referential ties among macropropositions are more explicit and accurate than in the original text)

In addition to these measures, the number of propositions included in an essay, and the number of macropropositions to which these propositions belonged were calculated. The maximum number of counted propositions was 18 (including three redundant propositions), and the maximum number of counted macropropositions was 5. Rating Procedure and Reliability of Coherence Assessments The third author, who had not assessed the learning strategies, rated each essay on all coherence levels, and the first author scored 20% of essays with regard to lexical coherence and all essays with regard to semantic coherence measures. In the coherence ratings, the two raters agreed in 97% of instances on lexical coherence, and in 91% and 83% of instances on the prepositional level and the local


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level of semantic coherence, respectively. The raters agreed in 83% of essays on the global level. Some of the disputes were omissions, and disagreements were resolved in discussion. Overview of Analyses In general, ANOVA with repeated measures designs were applied in the study. These analyses were carried out on the data using either SAS (1985) or CSS:Statistica (1991) statistical data-processing systems for microcomputers. The main tests for examining the developmental changes in text-processing skills were those on the interaction effects of Achievement group x Grade (or Test), or of Achievement Group x Grade x Coherence Level. Univariate analyses were used to specify the effects (SAS 1985). MacNemar Test was employed to examine the significant changes within each strategy category and within each achievement group (BMDP, 1985). In all analyses, differences of p