The contribution of knowledge about anaphors, organisational signals and refutations to reading comprehension
Correction added on 16 January 2014 after first publication online on 19 December 2013. Due to an error, the ordering of the author names originally appeared in this article as García, Sánchez and Bustos, instead of the correct order of García, Bustos and Sánchez. This error has been corrected in this version of the article.
Abstract
Expository texts contain rhetorical devices that help readers to connect text ideas (within a text and with prior knowledge) and to monitor reading. Rhetorical competence addresses readers' skill in detecting, understanding and using these devices. We examined the contribution of rhetorical competence to reading comprehension on two groups of 11‐ to 13‐year‐old students: low‐level (Study 1) and high‐level (Study 2) reading skills. The measures of rhetorical competence assessed students' knowledge about anaphors, organisational signals and refutations. In both studies, each measure of rhetorical competence contributed significantly to reading comprehension once prior knowledge, working memory and decoding skills were controlled for. This contribution was higher in Study 2. Furthermore, whereas in Study 1, each measure of rhetorical competence had a unique contribution to reading comprehension when controlling for the other measures of rhetorical competence, in Study 2, only the knowledge about organisational signals and refutations had this unique contribution.
Number of times cited: 4
- Alejandra Meneses, Paola Uccelli, María Verónica Santelices, Marcela Ruiz, Daniela Acevedo and Javiera Figueroa, Academic Language as a Predictor of Reading Comprehension in Monolingual Spanish‐Speaking Readers: Evidence From Chilean Early Adolescents, Reading Research Quarterly, 53, 2, (223-247), (2017).
- J. Ricardo García, Manuel Montanero, Manuel Lucero, Isabel Cañedo and Emilio Sánchez, Comparing rhetorical devices in history textbooks and teachers’ lessons: Implications for the development of academic language skills, Linguistics and Education, 10.1016/j.linged.2018.07.004, 47, (16-26), (2018).
- Barbara Arfé, Lucia Mason and Inmaculada Fajardo, Simplifying informational text structure for struggling readers, Reading and Writing, 10.1007/s11145-017-9785-6, 31, 9, (2191-2210), (2017).
- Emilio Sánchez, J. Ricardo García and Andrea Bustos, Does rhetorical competence moderate the effect of rhetorical devices on the comprehension of expository texts beyond general comprehension skills?, Reading and Writing, 30, 3, (439), (2017).
