Establishing Propositional Relations in Reading Stories

Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1996

The study reported in this paper examined four groups of readers (L2-Intermediate, L2-Advanced, L1-Japanese, and L1-English) when they processed and recalled two passages that varied in degree of causal coherence (Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985). Concurrent verbal reports and recall data were collected. It was found that L1 readers used much of their attention for higher level processes such as the generation of inferences and general knowledge associations. They processed the high- and low-coherence texts differently, generating more elaborations for low-coherence texts than for high-coherence texts. Furthermore, L1 readers generated backward inferences according to the text's causal structure and recalled events with many causal connections more frequently than events with few connections. These findings confirm L1 research findings (Fletcher & Bloom, 1988; Goldman & Varnhargen, 1986; Graesser & Clark, 1985; Singer, 1995; Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985; van den Broek, 1994). O...

Coherence Relations in Primary School Textbooks: Variation across School Subjects, 2019

The aim of this study was to compare the use of coherence relations in the school textbooks of four primary school subjects. A corpus of 1,882 texts, corresponding to the genres used to teach in the school textbooks of Science, Language, Mathematics, and History, was analyzed. The analysis was performed manually using a taxonomy that incorporates and adapts criteria developed in the Cognitive approach to Coherence Relations and in the Connectivity Model. Results show that while some relations are used across school subjects (Conjunction, Concept Description), others are used almost exclusively in certain school subjects (Condition-Event in Science, Basic Contrast in History, Deictic in Language, and Condition-Question in Mathematics). Considering that types of coherence relations are different in terms of internal complexity, these results may represent relevant information for classroom instruction, primary school textbook design, and text comprehension research.

The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between coherence relations introduced in the texts of textbooks and PISA reading skill results. In line with this aim textbooks of three countries (Korea, USA and Turkey) are selected that would be qualified as "successful", "somewhat successful" and "unsuccessful" according to PISA results. Five texts chosen randomly from each of the textbooks of these three countries, fifteen texts in total are compiled. A database of 1032 propositions is formed from the texts and these propositions are analyzed in light of a coherence classification so that 1152 coherence relations are determined. According to the findings, there are 464 cause effect relationships, 386 resemblance relationships and 302 contiguity relations. The types of coherence relations obtained are described in comparison with PISA reading skill results of the mentioned countries. According to this, cause effect relationships are attained greatest in Korean textbooks (202) though this relationship is determined fewest in Turkish textbooks (109). Resemblance relationships are greatest in Turkish textbooks (144) while fewest in Korean textbooks. And the contiguity relation is greatest in American textbooks (112) and fewest in Korean textbooks (92).

System, 2006

Success at university depends to a large extent on students' ability to read expository texts effectively in order to access and understand information, and study it for exam purposes. An important component of the comprehension process is the reader's ability to connect current information with information mentioned previously. One aspect of this text connecting process involves logical connectives. These are text devices that explicitly signal how chunks of information in a text are related to one another in a specific logical semantic relationship. This paper reports on findings from a study that investigated ESL students' ability to connect information linked by illustrative, causal and adversative logical connectives during the reading of expository texts. The comprehension of logical relations was examined in relation to the students' academic performance and their language proficiency in English, the language of learning and teaching. The findings showed a robust relationship between the ability to comprehend logical relations in expository text on the one hand, and academic performance and ESL proficiency levels on the other hand. In particular, the academically poor performers found causal and adversative relations challenging. In discussing the results, the implications of these findings for reading comprehension in general and for academic support programmes for ESL students at tertiary level in particular are considered.

The effect of exposure to coherence relations on its processing and comprehension: Exploring Chilean primary school students' performance, 2021

Previous corpus-based studies (Ibáñez, Moncada & Cárcamo, 2019) have identified the most and the least frequent coherence relations in Chilean primary school textbooks. Based on these findings, in this study, we explored the effect of exposure to coherence relations on their processing and comprehension. We expected the most frequent coherence relations in school textbooks to be more easily processed and better comprehended than the least frequent ones. Our expectation is explained by integrating the Language Experience (LE) hypothesis (Nippold & Taylor, 2002) and the Schematic Structural Expectations (SSE) hypothesis (Mulder, 2008). A self-paced reading experiment with a within-subjects design and cumulative window paradigm was carried out. One hundred and thirty-eight participants (12-14 years old), attending Chilean schools participated in the experiment. Each of them read 30 experimental items in two different sessions. Results revealed, in the first place, low levels of reading comprehension achievement. General results also showed that, although participants read the most frequent coherence relations slower than the least frequent ones, they comprehended them better. Analysis showed different patterns depending on the subject, which demonstrated that our expectations were partially fulfilled.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between connectives in Turkish texts and readers’ reading comprehension. Research was conducted with a total of 50 teachers. In the study group, readers’ reading comprehension was determined through 10 descriptive texts by using open-ended questions. The results of the analysis revealed that, while there is no statistically significant correlation between the reading comprehension scores of the good readers and the numbers of the connectives such as temporal, causal, adversative and additive in the texts forming the study database, a negative correlation was found between the reading comprehension scores of the poor readers and concession connectives at the level of r = -0.805 (p>0.05) and the connectives expressing expansion at the level of r = -0.647 (p>0.05). Keywords: Coherence, Language education, Discourse markers, Cohesive markers, Conjunctions

Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1993

The study investigates the role of causal reasoning in second language (L2) narrative comprehension. Subjects read and recalled texts that were either high or low in causal coherence. This read-and-recall procedure was repeated. Half of the subjects reported their thoughts during reading. The major finding was that first language (L1) readers recalled the high coherence texts better than the low coherence texts. Advanced L2 readers showed a similar advantage for thehigh coherence texts, but only in their second reading. Intermediate readers' recall was lower and showed no advantage for highly coherent texts. The verbal report data generally supported these patterns. These results indicate that L2 readers have difficulty detecting the higher order causal structure in texts. This structure is a central component of L1 readers' mental representation of the information in a text. As L2 readers' skills improve, their ability to detect causal relations increases, although even...

Learning and Individual Differences

We investigated online processing of causal relations in beginning first (L1) and second language (L2) readers (8-10 years old). By means of eye-tracking, we measured children's processing times of two-clause sentences including a causal relation. Two text-related factors were investigated: coherence marking (i.e., presence vs. absence of the Dutch connective omdat 'because') and linear order of clauses (i.e., cause-effect vs. effect-cause). In addition, syntactic knowledge was included as a child-related factor of interest. The results showed that coherence marking and individual differences in syntactic knowledge influenced children's online sentence processing. In contrast to L1 readers, the absence of a connective led to longer sentence processing times for L2 readers with lower syntactic knowledge; they experienced more difficulty with processing sentences in which no connective was present. Apparently, L2 readers with limited syntactic knowledge benefit from coherence marking provided by a connective, which allows them to establish the causal coherence relation between clauses in a more efficient way. Reversing the linear order of clauses did not affect children's online sentence processing. This study provides an initial step towards the use of online measures to examine sentence processing in beginning L1 and L2 readers aimed at gaining more insight into L2 reading comprehension difficulties.

Current psychology letters

1984

A study investigating the influence of certain features of cohesion and coherence on Israeli college students' difficulty in reading English expository teats examined the reader's ability to understand sequences of propositions and familiarity with markers of cohesion. Three methods were used to investigate the problem: application of a readability formula to the texts, several reading comprehension tests of original and altered versions of texts, and discourse analysis. The subjects were 3,600 freshmen at Haifa University attending a required English reading comprehension course. The students' native languages were generally Hebrew and Arabic, and most of them had had seven or eight years of English instruction. The readability formula and discourse analysis were applied to the texts used, and the comprehension tests were administered as a regular part of the course. The findings emphasize the importance of context in reading comprehension by showing that difficulties are not limited to lexical items but are related to the connection between ideas in sentences and paragraphs. Improved instruction in recognition of markers of cohesion and increased focus on relationships between sentences are recommended. (MSE)