2005 Uppincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc. Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts The Role of the Reader and the Text Rachel M. Best, PhD; Michael Rowe, MS; Yasuhiro Ozuru, PhD; Danielle S. McNamara, PhD Many students from elementary school through college encounter difficulty understanding their science textbooks, regardless of whether they have language disorders. This article discusses some of the particular difficulties associated with science text comprehension and possible remedies for facilitating and enhancing comprehension of challenging expository text materials. Specifically, we focus on the difficulties associated with generating inferences needed to comprehend science texts. The successful generation of inferences is affected by factors such as students' prior knowl- edge and reading strategies, and the manner in which science texts are written. Many students lack the necessary prior knowledge and reading strategies to generate inferences and thus com- prehend science texts only poorly. Further, science texts are typically "low<ohesion" texts, which means that they require readers to generate many inferences and fill in conceptual gaps. Remedies for overcoming comprehension difficulties include matching texts to students' knowledge level and providing explicit instruction aimed at teaching students to use reading comprehension strate- gies for comprehension monitoring, paraphrasing, and elaborations. The computer-supported tool iSTART Onteractive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking) is introduced as a techno- logical support to assist students and teachers in the teaching/learning enterprise. Key words: comprehension, prior knowledge, reading strategies, science texts, text cohesion A DREADED challenge, even for many stu- JLJLdents with typical development, let alone for those with language disorders, is reading the science textbook. Even if students can decode, read, and understand words on the page, the challenge remains to put the words From the University of Memphis, Memphis, Tenn. We express our thanks to Nickola Nelson and three anonymous reviewers regarding their helpful com- ments on an earlier draft of this article. This material is based on work supported by grants from the Insti- tute of Education Sciences (IES R3056020018-02) and the National Science Foundation (NSF: IERl 0241144) awarded to the fourth author, Danielle S. McNamara. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommen- dations expressed in this material are those of the au- thors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IES or NSE Corresponding author: Rachei M. Best, PhD, or Danielle S. McNamara, PhD, Department of Psychology, 202 Psychology Bldg, The University of Memphis, Mem- phis, TN 38152 (e-mail: rbestmail.psyc.memphis.edu or d. mcnamara@mail.psyc. memphis. edu). together and make sense of them. For some students, the words remain a string of words, rather than a coherent, comprehensible, and learnable message. Many teachers recognize the problems that students face, as w^ell as the possibility that students may not actually read, let alone comprehend their textbook as- signments. This problem is particularly pro- nounced in difficult subject areas such as sci- ence (Bowen, 1999; Snow, 2002). Comprehension difficulties arise for a num- ber of reasons, ranging from poor word- decoding abilities to the inability to use ef- fective reading strategies. In this article, we first discuss the cognitive processes involved in the successful comprehension of science texts, drawing on a theoretical framework on the basis of Kintsch's (1998) construction in- tegration model (CI model) to explain the role of inference making in deep-level comprehen- sion. Within the framework of the CI model, we then discuss comprehension problems commonly observed in child and adolescent 65 66 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY-MARCH 2005 populations when reading science texts, in- cluding problems resulting from one text- related factor (text cohesion) and two reader- related factors (domain-relevant knowledge and reading strategies). Finally, we propose text-based and reader-based remediation tech- niques to facilitate and enhance science text comprehension and thus overcome compre- hension problems associated with reading dif- ficult texts. DNFERENCING AS THE KEY TO DEEP COMPREHENSION OF SCIENCE TEXTS Reading comprehension can be defined as "the ability to obtain meaning from w^rit- ten text for some purpose" (Vellutino, 2003, p. 51). To comprehend successfully, the reader must identify a series of letters as a word, access the meaning of the word from the lexicon or mental dictionary (Perfetti, 1985), and integrate individual word mean- ings into a coherent sentence-level represen- tation (Vellutino, Scanlon, Small, & Tanzman, 1994). Deep comprehension, however, re- quires more than the mere interpretation of individual sentences; the reader must also be able to integrate individual sentence mean- ings into a coherent text-level representa- tion (Kintsch, 1988, 1998). In other words, to achieve deep comprehension, the reader must construct a global meaning that inte- grates multiple sentences. The primary focus in this article is on inference generation, a pro- cess that leads to text-based and knowledge- based connections to, and across, sentences. The process of creating connections while reading by generating inferences underlies the successful and deep-level comprehension of science texts. Making inferences is a critical feature of understanding the overall meaning of texts (Kintsch, 1988) because inferences combine the individual sentence meanings distributed across the text into a coherent structure (Gernsbacher, 1997). In other words, the meaning of a text often remains fragmented and disconnected without inferences because texts normally do not (or cannot) state all the information relevant to the situations or events. Therefore, to successfully compre- hend a text, the reader must generate infer- ences to fill in "missing" information and build a coherent mental model that incorporates all the information in the text (Zwaan & Singer, 2003). For example, consider the following sentence pair: 1. Plants lack a nervous system. 2. They carmot make quick responses to stimuli. The first inference that must be made after the first sentence is that the pronominal ref- erent for "they" is "plants." Comprehension also depends on inferring that "the ability to make quick responses" is somehow related to the "nervous system."Building this inferential connection requires the use of logic, syntactic knowledge, and the ability to access knowl- edge from semantic memory, or to recall rel- evant information cited in earlier parts of the text. This form of inference is called a "back- ward causal inference" because it involves at- tributing the cause of a phenomenon or event described in a given sentence to a thing or event described in a previous section of the text. In the current example, successful, deep- level understanding of this passage requires the inference that the nervous system is re- sponsible for quick responses. It illustrates the point that successful comprehension of texts requires more than word-decoding, vocabu- lary, and syntactic skills. Deep-level compre- hension also requires the ability to make in- ferential links across individual sentences in order to construct a global picture of underly- ing concepts. According to Kintsch's (1988, 1998) CI model, to accomplish this, readers must first use their language-related know^ledge (e.g., morphology, syntax, semantics) to construct a representation on the basis of the information explicitly stated in the text. This initial level of representation is often far removed from a coherent model regarding the situations or events that the text aims to describe; rather the model reflects the information that is ex- plicitly stated in the text. Thus, as illustrated with the plant example, the meaning of a text may remain fragmented and disconnected. Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts 67 To go beyond a purely text-level compre- hension, the CI model then posits that readers must draw on additional information, such as prior domain knowledge, or information cited in previous parts ofthe text, and integrate this information into a more complete mental rep- resentation of the events that the text aims to describe. In this sense, the representation that readers must construct to comprehend a text's deeper meanings does not necessarily correspond w^ith the representation that they can construct directly from information pro- vided explicitly in the text. The related impli- cation of the CI model is that the quality of the text determines the amount and type of infer- ences that the reader needs to generate in or- der to comprehend the events or situations in a coherent manner. TEXT COHESION AND INFERENCING The CI model suggests that comprehension can be improved when text cohesion is im- proved, thus reducing the need to make in- ferences. This improvement would be par- ticularly true for readers who are unable to generate inferences from difficult texts. Text cohesion refers to properties of the text that determine the degree to which readers need to generate inferences to construct a coher- ent mental representation from the informa- tion explicitly stated in the text. Texts are considered to be low cohesion w^hen con- structing a coherent representation from the text requires many inferences. Texts are con- sidered high cohesion when elements within the text provide more explicit clues to rela- tions within and across sentences. Cohesion is important at both the global and local levels of text. The term global co- hesion refers to the overall cohesion of the text. Signals for global cohesion include intro- ductory paragraphs, headers, summary para- graphs, and the semantic overlap between paragraphs. Local cohesion concerns the rela- tions between adjacent sentences. Signals for local cohesion include semantic overlap be- tween the sentences, connectives that explic- itly describe the relation between sentences. and explanations for difficulty terms or con- cepts. Texts are considered to be locally co- hesive to the extent that the relationship be- tween adjacent sentences (or clauses) is made explicit through linguistic cues. For exam- ple, argument overlap can be increased by repeating a referent in a sentence and using fewer pronominal referents or synonyms. Be- low are examples of sentence pairs that do and do not repeat the target referent "sexual reproduction": 1. We tend to take the existence of sex- ual reproduction for granted. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is a serious puzzle. 2. We tend to take the existence of sex- ual reproduction for granted. However, from an evolutionary standpoint, sexual reproduction is a serious puzzle. In this example, the second sentence pair is presumed easier to process because the au- thor has explicitly stated that sexual repro- duction is "the puzzle." Also, by adding the connective, however (other examples include therefore, because, etc.), the author has pro- vided more explicit cues for readers on the na- ture ofthe link between the sentences, gener- ating the expectation among readers that the nature of the puzzle is about to be explained. A second aspect of cohesion is termed ex- planatory cohesion. This aspect concerns the degree to w^hich the background informa- tion necessary to make connections among relevant sentences is provided explicitly by the text. Specifically, the presence of domain- specific background information necessary for the coherent linking of sentences has a large impact on explanatory cohesion. Re- turning to the previous example about plants, readers would be more likely to recognize the relationship between the two sentences, and to construct a representation that integrated their meanings if the sentences "Plants lack a nervous system" and "They cannot make quick response to stimuli" were preceded by the explanatory sentence "The nervous system is critical for animal's ability to pro- duce quick response to stimuli." Adding ex- planatory information so that readers do not have to rely solely on background knowledge 68 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY-MARCH 2005 helps the reader construct inferences which, in turn, facilitate deeper comprehension. A common problem of many science textbooks, however, is that authors often leave out information they assume to be prior knowledge for target readers. Textbook analyses have revealed that such omissions even occur for information that is critical to the construction of situations or events de- scribed by the text (Beck, McKeown, Sinatra, & Loxterman, 1991). Studies also have shown that improving text quality by increasing local and/or global cohesion facilitates comprehen- sion as assessed with a variety of comprehen- sion measures, including recall, open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions, and card-sorting tasks. For example, the positive influence of increasing text cohesion on com- prehension is observed with both narrative texts (e.g.. Beck, McKeown, Omanson, & Pople, 1984) and expository texts (e.g.. Beck et al., 1991; Britton & Gulgoz, 1991; Britton, Gulgoz, & Glynn, 1993; Linderholm et al., 2000), especially when readers do not have sufficient domain knowledge to generate inferences necessary for comprehension (McNamara, 2001; McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996; McNamara & Kitsch, 1996). READER ABBLITY AND INFERENCING Revising a text to increase cohesion can re- duce the need for readers to make inferences about relationships among ideas in texts, but there w^ill always be a need for students to gen- erate inferences, if they are to build a men- tal model of the global concepts conveyed by the text. Several theoretical accounts have been posited for why some readers are able to generate inferences better than others (see McNamara & O'Reilly, 2004, for a review). Some researchers have proposed that read- ers' ability to generate inferences is a func- tion of their working memory capacity Gust & Carpenter, 1992; Rosen & Engle, 1997; cf. McNamara & Scott, 2001). According to these theories, individuals who can hold and pro- cess more information in working memory are better able to make inferences, because they can hold and process more of the text at the same time (Engle & Marshall, 1983). In this article, we focus on two other important factors that influence readers' abilities to gen- erate inferences. One factor concerns read- ers' preexisting domain-specific knowledge; the other concerns their degree of compe- tency in using reading strategies. We empha- size roles of domain knowledge and reading strategies because, unlike working memory capacity, they are subject to intervention. Domain-specific knowledge refers to the degree to which readers possess knowledge that is specifically related to the text con- tent. Reading strategies refer to a general set of abilities that facilitate active process- ing of a text's content, and are considered to be closely related to metacognitive abil- ities, such as knowledge of cognition and the ability to monitor and regulate ongoing cognitive processes (Hacker, 1998). Domain- specific knowledge and the ability to use reading strategies are not completely inde- pendent. Competent readers are able to inte- grate them and use them in concert. On the other hand, our research suggests that the two factors are distinguishable because they tend to be related to different aspects of the reading comprehension process. Whereas domain-specific knowledge is closely related to how easily one can comprehend material at a given level by accessing relevant knowl- edge, the ability to use reading strategies is more closely related to the effort and use of active processing techniques, such as elabo- rative and bridging inferences (Best, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2004; Ozuru, Best, & McNamara, 2004). Contributions of domain-specific knowledge to inferencing With respect to the benefits of domain- specific knowledge, readers with rich and or- ganized topic-relevant knowledge structures (i.e., schema) are at an advantage in making inferences because they can gain quick ac- cess to relevant knowledge structures with minimal reliance on explicit text-based input. Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts 69 For example, readers are known to gener- ate backward causal inferences (discussed earlier) routinely when the topic of the text is generally familiar, as they are in narra- tive texts that tend to regard familiar top- ics such as relationships between individ- uals and common problems encountered in everyday life (e.g., Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994). On the other hand, readers are less likely to draw backward causal infer- ences when reading unfamiliar expository texts (Noordman, Vonk, & Kempff, 1992). These findings suggest that readers typically do not generate backward causal inferences when they have less knowledge about the text topic. Also, a wealth of empirical ev- idence demonstrates that a reader's back- ground knowledge facilitates and enhances comprehension and learning from exposi- tory materials (e.g., Afflerbach, 1986; Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979; Lundeberg, 1987; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996; Means & Voss, 1985; O'Reilly & McNamara, 2002). Having rich domain-specific knowledge seems to be an important factor supporting in- ference generation, but it is not an essential. Studies have show^n that some aspects of in- ference generation are observed even w^hen knowledge about a topic is limited. For exam- ple, Noordman et al. (1992) conducted two experiments in w^hich they showed that read- ers are able to draw^ backward causal infer- ences even when reading expository texts on unfamiliar topics. In a similar vein. Singer, Harkness, and Stewart (1997) found evidence of inference generation for unfamiliar expos- itory materials, that is, as long as the read- ers were not rushed in their examination of the texts. Together, these studies show that readers sometimes generate inferences even when they possess little domain-specific knowledge, indicating that inference genera- tion depends not only on the reader's knowl- edge level, but also on other factors. Likely candidates include discourse cues that signal the nature of texts, time constraints on tasks, and readers' perceptions of their reading goals (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992). Rich domain-specific knowledge also interacts in interesting ways with text-based factors. McNamara and colleagues (e.g., McNamara, 2001; McNamara et al., 1996; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996) investigated the interactions of text cohesion and prior domain-specific knowledge in text compre- hension by manipulating text cohesion and measuring the effects on comprehension by low- and high-knowledge readers at the middle-school and college levels. Inter- estingly, whereas low-knowledge readers demonstrated better comprehension when reading high-cohesion texts, high-knowledge readers experienced better comprehension when reading low-cohesion texts. One inter- pretation of this finding is that the redun- dancy between information in high-cohesion texts and background knowledge led high- knowledge readers to engage in passive processing, thus keeping their comprehen- sion at a surface level (see also Gilabert, Martinez, & Vidal-Abarca, 2005). According to this explanation, increased text-based cohesion may interfere with high-know^ledge readers' ability to actively process texts by decreasing the need for spontaneously gen- erated inferences. In contrast, low-cohesion texts require readers to generate many inferences. Thus, high-knowledge readers are induced by low-cohesion text to work more actively to integrate information in the text with their prior know^ledge. This active processing allows high-know^ledge readers to achieve deeper levels of comprehension. However, low-knowledge readers do not possess the knowledge necessary to generate the inferences required by low-cohesion text. As a consequence, low-know^ledge readers are disadvantaged by a combination of low text-cohesion and low domain-specific knowledge. There is also evidence that readers with high reading ability (as measured with the Nelson-Denny test; Brown, Fishco, & Hanna, 1993) and high domain knowledge per- form equally well when reading either low- cohesion or high-cohesion versions of texts (O'Reilly & McNamara, 2004). They found 70 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DisoRDERS,(fANUARY-MARCH 2005 that only high-knowledge readers with low scores on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test benefited from reading low cohesion texts. In contrast, high-knowledge readers with higher scores on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test benefited from reading high-cohesion texts. This pattern of results indicates that whereas high-knowledge readers with lower reading abilities tend to process texts actively only when the low-cohesion version of the text demands the active generation of inferences, high-know^ledge readers with good reading abilities tend to actively process texts regard- less of the text cohesion level or task de- mands. This research suggests that how ac- tively a reader processes text by generating inferences may be influenced not only by the reader's domain-specific knowledge but also by an ability to use knowledge actively and strategically when reading science texts. In the next section, we consider the role of read- ing strategy use in generation of inferences that facilitate deep-level comprehension of science texts. Contributions of reading strategies to inferencing Solely having domain-specific knowledge is often not enough; to be used effectively, readers must deliberately activate their knowl- edge or it may remain somew^hat "inert" and fail to contribute to deeper understanding. That is, students may have some domain and general knowledge that can be used to gen- erate inferences and thus understand a text at a deeper level, but they may not real- ize that their knowledge is applicable to a particular reading situation. Indeed, several researchers have found that readers some- times encounter difficulty invoking preex- isting knowledge in novel situations (e.g., Bransford, 1979; Hasher & Zacks, 1979; Nitsch, 1977). This situation is where reading strategy con- tributions come into play. Competency in reading strategy use provides an additional factor that influences inference generation while reading science texts. The notion that reading strategy use facilitates inference gen- eration (and hence, deep comprehension) is bolstered by several sources of evidence. Ac- cording to McNamara and Scott (2001), the use of reading strategies, such as the care- ful monitoring of text contents at the time of reading, is an important component of read- ing comprehension ability. Good comprehen- ders (e.g., as assessed using the Nelson-Denny Reading Comprehension Test) are more likely to generate inferences that repair concep- tual gaps between clauses, sentences, and paraphrases (Cain & Oakhill, 1999; Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1994; Magliano & Millis, 2003; Magliano, Wiemer-Hastings, Millis, Munoz, & McNamara, 2002; OakhiU, 1982,1984; Oakhill & Yuill, 1996). Furthermore, good compre- henders have more metacognitive knowledge (Baker, 1982; Wong, 1985) and are more likely to use reading strategies to repair gaps in their understanding than poor comprehen- ders (e.g.. Garner, 1987; Long & Golding, 1993; Oakhill, 1982, 1983). Finally, interven- tions that promote the active and strategic use of knowledge has been show^n to improve reading comprehension (e.g., Bereiter & Bird, 1985; Bulgren, Deshler, Schumaker, & Lenz, 2000; Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu, & La Vancher, 1994; Cornoldi & Oakhill, 1996; Kucan & Beck, 1997; McNamara, 2004, McNamara & Scott, 1999; O'Reilly, Best, & McNamara, 2004; O'Reilly, Sinclair, & McNamara, 2004a, 2004b). Collectively, these studies indicate that reading strategies are important to suc- cessful comprehension, and that readers can be taught strategies to improve their comprehension. CHALLENGES OF COMPREHENDING SCIENCE TEXTS Students of all ages have been found to experience difficulty comprehending and learning from science texts (Brand-Gruwel, Aarnoutse, & Van den Bos, 1998; Nichols, Rupley, & Willson, 1997). The problems with science textbook comprehension, however, are particularly pertinent among students at the elementary-school and middle-school lev- els, when children are first exposed to them. Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts 71 Science texts contain difficult vocabulary and syntax, and also place greater emphasis on inferential thinking and the use of prior knowledge (Allington, 2002). The increased exposure to challenging expository materi- als, including science textbooks, at a time when domain knowledge is still developing places greater cognitive demands on young readers, and may account for some of the read- ing comprehension difficulties experienced by children in the third to fifth grades, which is sometimes called the fourth-grade slump (McNamara, Floyd, Best, & Louwerse, 2004; Meichenbaum & Biemiller, 1998; Sweet & Snow, 2003). In this section of the article, we discuss fac- tors that account for why the comprehension of science text is particularly difficult for many students. We focus on three factors of read- ing comprehension identified earlier in the discussion (text quality, background knowl- edge, and reading skill). Our goal is to provide a detailed picture of the nature of problems commonly experienced by students in this particular curricular area to assist clinicians in devising possible remedies. KNOWLEDGE DEFICITS AND MISCONCEPTIONS As noted previously, the CI model of text comprehension emphasizes domain-specific knowledge as an important factor driving text comprehension. Further, a number of studies indicate that knowledge is, arguably, the most important factor determining expository text comprehension (e.g., Afflerbach, 1986; Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; Chiesi, Spilich, & Voss, 1979; Lundeberg, 1987; Means & Voss, 1985). According to this view, it is inevitable that many students experience significant dif- ficulty comprehending expository texts and, in particular, texts dealing with scientific con- cepts because their existing knowledge is lim- ited. Science textbooks, along with other ex- pository texts, are used in the classroom for the purpose of providing ne^v information to students. Thus, it is not surprising that most students in the classroom have a little to no background knowledge about the domain- specific expository text content when they first encounter it. Students' knowledge deficits may take, at least, two different forms. First, many students may lack the knowledge of specific concepts outlined by the text (e.g., osmosis, gravity, etc.). As our earlier plant example indicated, w^hen students do not have a sufficient under- standing of a particular concept, they often have a problem generating inferences to link concepts within or across sentences. As a re- sult, their understanding of the text remains fragmented and isolated, causing a failure to form a coherent mental representation of the overall text content. Second, students' knowledge deficits may take the form of preexisting misconcep- tions based on common knowledge or per- sonal experience, rather than scientific con- cepts. Understanding scientific phenomena often requires adopting a completely different perspective from that acquired from every- day perceptual experiences. Indeed, Vygotsky (1978) pointed out the problem of integrat- ing spontaneously developed knowledge with "scientific" or "theoretical" concepts, which are abstract in nature and cannot be acquired from direct perceptual experience. For exam- ple, children's direct perceptual experience of the movement of the sun in the sky can cre- ate the misunderstanding that the sun moves across the sky. This perceptual experience can make it difficult for children to under- stand that the sun moves as a function of the earth rotating and revolving around the sun, and not the sun's movement around the earth. Children with misconceptions about the movement of the sun may fail to compre- hend a text about the solar system accurately because they cannot reconcile information stated in the text with preexisting background knowledge gained from everyday perceptual experiences. According to the CI model, the utilization of preexisting misconceptions (e.g., incorrect background knowledge) in reading comprehension can give rise to the construction of an inaccurate mental model of the situation (by making inappropriate 72 TOPICS IN LANGLIAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY-MARCH 2005 inferences), which contrasts with the scien- tific model of the situation intended by the authors of the text. Such misconceptions may give rise to what Piaget (1985) described as the "assimilation" of the incoming infor- mation to the preexisting knowledge struc- ture, instead of "accommodation" of the stu- dent's current knowledge structure to the text. Thus, for students with misconceptions, deep, or accurate, text comprehension re- quires not only accessing and using prior background knowledge, but also recognizing misconceptions, or contradictions between their prior knowledge and the text content. Perhaps most importantly, successful compre- hension requires that readers subsequently re- pair any erroneous aspects of their mental models (Chi et al., 1994). TEXT COHESION INFLUENCES REVISITED As discussed earlier, several studies have shown text with high cohesion to be partic- ularly beneficial to readers with less knowl- edge about the text domain (Beck et al., 1991; Britton et al., 1993; Britton & Gulgoz, 1991; McNamara, 2001; McNamara et al., 1996; Vidal-Abarca, Martinez, & Gilabert, 2000). It is important to bear in mind that there is not an optimal level of explicitness or cohesion for all readers. Rather, comprehension suc- cess also depends on the knowledge level and reading strategies that the reader brings into the reading situation. As mentioned earlier, high-cohesion text is not necessarily helpful to high-know^ledge readers with a low level of competency in reading strategy use. It is theo- rized that this reverse cohesion effect occurs because high-knowledge readers are more likely to actively engage with and compre- hend texts that contain fewer cohesion cues. However, many, if not most, students lack the necessary domain-specific knowledge to gen- erate inferences when reading their science textbooks, particularly if the books are w^rit- ten with low cohesion. The point here is that students' knowl- edge deficits often are compounded by a gen- eral lack of cohesion in science textbooks. Moreover, there is reason to believe that the selection of science texts may be carried out by textbook selection committees with- out sufficient attention to all of the textual features that influence the understandabUity of the texts. First, texts are often classified and selected on the basis of traditional read- ability formulas that rely on simple indices such as word frequency, word length, and sentence length (Beck et al., 1991; Britton et al., 1993). According to these formulas, texts that comprise short words and sen- tences are considered less difficult, and thus more suitable for novice readers. Short words tend to be more frequently used and encoun- tered, and thus are considered to be de facto more familiar (Zipf, 1932). Short sentences place fewer processing demands pertaining to lower level cognitive process (e.g., syntactic processing), but short sentences do not nec- essarily facilitate deep-level comprehension because they offer fewer cohesion supports for low-knowledge readers. That is, texts char- acterized by short words and short sentences are likely to lack adequate cohesion because the sentences are not likely to contain con- nectives. In addition, a focus on readability in terms of short words and sentences is likely to diminish the focus on elements of cohe- sion such as referential and explanatory cohe- sion. The lack of cohesion supports built into the text places other demands on the reader, such as the need to make inferences about the nature of the links within and between sentences, which will tend to interfere with higher level processing. In sum, a reliance on readability formulas is likely to result in a lack of attention to other textual properties that have an important bearing on deep-level text comprehension. A second complicating factor is that text- books are written by experts on the topic. Experts' high-level knowledge of a subject matter can interfere w^ith writing for less knowledgeable readers such as school stu- dents (Britton et al., 1993). A large body of evidence indicates that people have difficulty taking a perspective of others who are dissimi- lar to themselves (for a review, see Nickerson, Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts 73 1999). In other words, vast domain knowl- edge, which is obvious and natural to domain experts, can lead them to assume an unrealis- tic amount of prior knowledge on the part of readers (Beck et al., 1991). As a consequence, textbooks often lack sufficient background in- formation for non-domain-expert readers to understand the content, impeding the forma- tion of a coherent situation model in these readers' minds. READING STRATEGY EVELUENCES REVISITED As reported earlier, the use of strategic read- ing practices, such as the active generation of inferences using backward causal inferencing, plays a critical role in the deep-level compre- hension of science texts. However, there are reasons to believe that it is difficult to attain sufficient competency in reading strategy use by the time children begin to read challeng- ing science texts. We discuss two possible rea- sons why students struggle to acquire and ap- ply reading strategies. First, students, particularly those at the elementary school level, may not have mas- tered efficient and accurate lower level com- prehension skills (e.g., efficient word decod- ing), which are necessary for the execution of higher level comprehension processes (e.g., strategic reading practices, metacomprehen- sion, backward causal inferences). Slow or inaccurate word recognition skills may af- fect comprehension by consuming too much working memory capacity, thus constraining resources that could be used for deep compre- hension processes involving inference gener- ation (Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Curtis, 1980; Hannon & Daneman, 2001; Perfetti, 1985). Many studies have indicated that chil- dren may not have mastered word decoding skills by the time they are introduced to ex- pository materials (Brand- Gruwel, Aarnoutse, & Van den Bos, 1988; Mommers, 1987; Roth, Speece, Cooper, & De La Paz, 1996; Taschow, 1969; Vellutino, 2003) and, thus, are stUl strug- gling with reading fluency w^hen confronted with texts that introduce challenging new concepts. Second, even if students have acquired suf- ficient word decoding ability, they still may not have attained sufficient competency in us- ing reading strategies necessary for success- ful comprehension and learning from science texts. For many students, strategic reading practices needed to support inference gen- eration are unlikely to develop automatically just by virtue of reading narrative texts in classroom reading activities. Instead, knowl- edge of reading strategies and effective use of these strategies in comprehending challeng- ing expository texts may need to be explicitly taught. A report published by Educational Testing Service (ETS, 2004) on current fourth-grade reading instruction indicated that teachers do provide students with instructions on tech- niques such as "predicting contents of the material they are reading" and "making gen- eralizations and inferences about reading con- tents"(p. 24). However, there is little evidence that deep-level reading strategies are explic- itly taught as a part of the normal curricu- lum. It seems that the majority of reading com- prehension training administered at school to children focuses on lower level reading skills such as efficient word decoding skills (Mommers, 1987; Nichols et al., 1997; Press- ley & Wharton-McDonald, 1997; Roth et al., 1996; Wilson & Rupley, 1997). It is a con- cern if such instruction occurs in the absence, or at the expense, of the explicit teaching of higher level processes, such as strategic read- ing practices. Investigations regarding the use of metacognitive strategies, in fact, have in- dicated that teachers spend little time giving metacognitive and strategy-oriented instruc- tion pertaining to reading comprehension (Baker, 1996; Graesser, Person, & Magliano, 1995; Kurtz, Schneider, Carr, Borkowski, & Rellinger, 1990; Moley et al, 1992). Further- more, reading problems for children who have learned higher level reading skills such as inference generation strategies in the con- text of texts with a familiar narrative structure may only become apparent when they are faced with the additional demands of expos- itory texts about unfamiliar topics. The crux 74 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY-MARCH 2005 of the problem is that students are less likely to generate inferences when dealing with un- familiar materials, such as expository science texts (Noordman et al., 1992), even though this is exactly the situation in which they need to generate inferences for understand- ing and learning new information from the texts. In sum, it is important not to ignore the instruction of comprehension strategies at early stages of reading development. Young readers need explicit instruction in decoding words, but also need explicit instruction in how to strategically comprehend complex in- formation. REMEDIATION STRATEGIES Thus far, we have emphasized the impor- tance of inference generation in the compre- hension of science texts and the difficulties that many readers encounter generating in- ferences when reading science texts. The fi- nal goal of this article is to discuss possi- ble remediation strategies to enhance science text comprehension. The discussion focuses on two lines of research currently being pur- sued in our research laboratory at the Univer- sity of Memphis. One involves text difficulty, specifically the ways in which we can assess text difficulty and select texts most likely to fa- cilitate comprehension among different kinds of readers. The other involves designing in- structional programs to teach readers active reading practices based on metacognition and reading strategies that facilitate the deep-level comprehension of science texts. Text-based modiflcations: Identiiying texts appropriate for the reader As the prior discussion has indicated, text characteristics have an important impact on the readers' deep-level comprehension of sci- ence texts, particularly for readers who have less domain knowledge, which, we believe, comprise a majority of school students read- ing science texts for the purpose of acquir- ing knowledge. Reviews of existing research indicate that many of the expository texts used in actual classrooms are too demanding for students who lack sufficient background knowledge because they are "low cohesion" texts that require the reader to generate many inferences, written by experts who overesti- mate students' background knowledge. Given this situation, it is critically important for researchers and educational practitioners to find means to identify and select texts that are more appropriate for students, especially for those who lack necessary domain knowledge or who have language disorders that interfere with their ability to fill in the gaps. As Britton et al. (1993) and others (e.g.. Beck et al., 1991) have pointed out, current text classification systems and selection crite- ria (e.g., reading grade level formulas) appear to be oversimplistic, focusing on surface at- tributes of the text (e.g., word and sentence length) that affect relatively low levels of pro- cessing. One of the reasons for the use of simplistic methods is there has been no alter- native method to analyze and classify text dif- ficulty in a systematic manner (Britton et al., 1993). Readability measures do not take into account local cohesion (i.e., argument over- lap between adjacent sentences) or explana- tory cohesion, which contribute critically to how easily a reader processes a text. Thus, a more adequate assessment of text difficulty would include measures of local and global cohesion. Work being conducted in our lab has led to the development of a computerized tool, called Coh-Metrix (Graesser, McNamara, Louwerse, & Cai, 2004), which is designed to analyze various features of texts, includ- ing cohesion. The tool automatically measures text characteristics predictive of text diffi- culty using the latest techniques available in computer science and computational linguis- tics. Coh-Metrix provides measures of text co- hesion as well as other text difficulty mea- sures (e.g., word frequency, average sentence length, and type token ratio). The cohesion measures focus on the num- ber of connectives, pronouns, degree of argument overlap between sentences, and conceptual overlap between sentences across Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts 75 adjacent and distant sentences using La- tent Semantic Analysis (Landauer & Dumais, 1997), which was developed by researchers at the University of Colorado. As discussed ear- lier, the number of connectives contained in a text is an important measure of cohesion. Connectives provide explicit cues for readers when generating inferences. Similarly, argu- ment overlap, which is measured by the de- gree to which adjacent sentences share con- tent words, is known to be related to local cohesion because having lexical overlap helps readers relate sentences and construct higher text level representation. However, simple word matching may not provide a compre- hensive measure of overlap. As described by Landauer and Dumais (1997), Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) bol- sters argument overlap analysis by comput- ing the co-occurrence of two or more Un- guistic units (w^ords, phrases, sentence, etc.) with respect to a given reference point within the LSA space. The LSA space is a mathemat- ical, dimensional space for plotting vectors derived from the linguistic units (e.g., sen- tences) being compared. Landauer and Du- mais showed that LSA betw^een two linguistic units correlates w^ith the conceptual similarity among linguistic units, not just the identical words each unit possesses. The LSA is there- fore useful for measuring the approximate co- hesion between two sentences in terms of the overlap of conceptually related w^ords, not just the words themselves. Such a conceptual overlap between words would not be cap- tured in a simple analysis of argument overlap (i.e., word matching). Ultimately, the Coh-Metrix tool is designed to be used by researchers and educational practitioners to measure aspects of texts that contribute to reading comprehension diffi- culties. Although the tool does not yet in- clude established criteria for distinguishing low-cohesion texts from high-cohesion texts, it does offer information about differences in levels of cohesion measures. Researchers and educators can then use these as a guideline for selecting texts that are more or less co- hesive and thus more appropriate for read- ers with more or less domain knowledge. A Coh-Metrix analysis of texts from published studies of text cohesion (McNamara, Ozuru, Louwerse, & Graesser, 2005) indicates that the tool reliably captures critical aspects of text manipulations (argument overlap, in- crease of explanatory cohesion) such as those used in experimental research of text revision (e.g.. Beck et al., 1991; McNamara et al., 1996; Voss & Silfies, 1996). Overall, we believe that research investi- gating text features will provide a more sys- tematic and reliable method of measuring and classifying text difficulty. Furthermore, new^ measures of text difficulty should offer an important alternative to the simplistic mea- sures currently used (e.g., reading grade level formulas). Consequently, tools such as Coh- Metrix are anticipated to positively contribute to the process of assigning more appropri- ate texts to students who may lack sufficient background knowledge. Reader-focused interventions: Teaching reading strategies If problems that students encounter under- standing their science textbooks stem largely from deficits in, or erroneous, background knowledge, it is important to find reme- dies that compensate for "poor knowledge" by teaching them comprehension strategies. Even if a tool such as Coh-Metrix (Graesser et al., 2004) becomes capable of providing in- formation that helps improve text cohesion, it is impractical or even impossible to pro- vide all the cohesion cues and background in- formation necessary for low-knowledge read- ers. In addition, such an overly cohesive text might interfere with the active processing that is necessary for deep-level comprehension by higher ability readers (e.g., McNamara et al., 1996). Thus, reading comprehension difficul- ties relating to the comprehension of science texts need to be approached not only from the perspective of the text, but also from the per- spective of the reader. As we have noted throughout the article, it is the nature of education that readers of science texts read them for the purpose of 76 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DisoRDERS/jANtJARY-MARCH 2005 learning new information. Thus, most read- ers approach the task of reading science texts with low levels of topic-relevant knowledge. The circularity of this phenomenon is such that readers cannot comprehend the text con- tents at a deep level without learning new concepts or information from the text. This contrasts w^ith the reading process of narra- tive texts, where comprehension is supported by sufficient knowledge about the content so that inferences necessary for deep-level com- prehension may be generated relatively auto- matically. The comprehension processes nec- essary for science texts, therefore, require greater effort because the information rele- vant to understanding a given sentence, or re- lations between sentences, is not often read- ily accessible in long-term memory. Readers often need to search for relevant informa- tion through various forms of linking (e.g., association, analogy). Effortful generation of inferences is psychologically different from the inferences that readers generate to under- stand familiar narrative materials (see Kintsch, 1993). For this reason, not only readers, but also instructors, need to be aware of the nature of the difficulties associated with reading com- prehension and learning from science texts. They also need to actively deal with these problems by (1) explicitly discussing with stu- dents the nature of comprehension problems pertaining to science texts and (2) teaching and using techniques that help students with limited prior topic knowledge deal effectively and strategically with the challenges of sci- ence text comprehension. Numerous reading strategy interventions have been developed and tested. There is con- verging evidence to show that the provision of explicit reading strategy training. In which readers are taught and trained to actively pro- cess a text using specific reading strategies, is effective for facilitating deeper level compre- hension of texts. These intervention programs vary from those focusing on the training of lower level skills (Adams, 1990), motivational aspects of reading (Guthrie, 2003), and higher level strategies provided to low-achieving adolescents with comprehension difficulties and language disorders (Bulgren et al., 2000; Deshler, & Denton, 1984; Fisher, Schumaker, & Deshler, 2002). Our aim here is not to provide an exhaus- tive list of interventions, but to show the ways in which reading strategies can help students overcome knowledge deficits. We focus pre- dominantly on strategy training developed in our laboratory at the University of Memphis for typically developing students from the middle-school level and beyond (i.e., students most frequently exposed to science texts). Generally, our efforts have concentrated on teaching reading strategies to help typical stu- dents who lack topic-relevant knowledge for comprehending science texts. In the remain- der of this section, we first describe four spe- cific reading strategies that are known to con- tribute to active processing of science texts, and then describe Self-Explanation Reading Training, a reading strategy training interven- tion program developed in our lab that pro- vides instruction and practice on the use of these specific strategies. Comprehension monitoring Students' ability to monitor comprehension critically and accurately is the foundation of strategic and active reading (Hacker, 1998). That is, readers need to be aware of not only whether they are having comprehension problems, but also the nature of the problem they encounter (e.g., word meaning, syntax, or relations between sentences). However, there is evidence that most readers are rather poor at monitoring their own comprehen- sion (e.g., Glenberg, Wilkinson, & Epstein, 1982). Thus, providing training to improve comprehension monitoring is important to promote the active and strategic processing of expository texts. Specific methods of teach- ing comprehension monitoring include self- questioning and checking texts for content consistency. Research conducted with ele- mentary school students has indicated that "poor comprehenders" benefit from compre- hension monitoring training in w^hich they are taught to self-question what they understand Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts 11 about the material and to check the text for content consistency (Baker, 1985). Paraphrasing Paraphrasing is an important technique for facilitating the active processing of texts (Rosenshine & Meisler, 1994). Paraphrasing requires transforming the surface characteris- tics of the sentence by replacing the content words or syntactic structure of the sentence with equivalent forms, hence forcing readers to process the information actively by access- ing related but different lexical items. Para- phrasing also externalizes one's understating of the information in the text, which, in turn, helps readers monitor comprehension more closely. Difficulty when paraphrasing is a clear sign of a comprehension problem. Elaboration Generating elaborative inferences based on the reader's personal experience or common- sense knowledge relating to information de- scribed by the text is assumed to be use- ful for facilitating deep-level comprehension (McNamara, 2004). For one thing, elabora- tive inferences help readers overcome gaps in domain-specific knowledge. As our discus- sion has indicated, understanding texts at a deep level requires the reader to generate in- ferences to fill in gaps present in text-based in- formation, such that information distributed across text can be encoded as coherent and in an integrated manner. Also, the use of prior knowledge is important for helping the reader retain novel information learned from text in memory; new^ information cannot be learned and retained without being integrated with prior knowledge (Pressley et al., 1992). Thus, when readers do not have sufficient domain knowledge, they need to forcefully integrate the new information in the text with exist- ing knowledge by forming a link between the new information and indirectly related gen- eral knowledge or personal experience. As discussed earlier, however, relying on general knowledge and/or personal experience alone may lead to the formation of an inaccurate situation model (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978). This problem can be minimized if readers combine elaborations based on general knowledge and personal experience with inferences using in- formation cited in the prior sections of the text. Bridging The process of generating inferences using information stated in previous sections of the text plays an integral role in helping readers build a global representation ofthe text. More cohesive texts provide a stifficient amount of background information for readers to build a global understanding of the overall text by continuously adding and integrating newly introduced information with previously cited information (Clark & Haviland, 1977; Gernsbacher & Hargreaves, 1988). Although many school texts may not contain sufficient background information and the cohesion cues that help readers link information presented in different sentences in an ap- propriate manner (e.g.. Beck et al., 1991), students should be taught to maximize the use of information provided within a text to understand the meaning of individual sentences as well as the overall meaning of the text. When struggling to disambiguate and/or narrow down the meaning of a given sentence, readers need to learn that informa- tion stated in the previous section can be a powerful and reliable source of information that can aid their comprehension. Self-Explanation Reading Training (SERT) In summary, we postulate that the combi- nation of the above-mentioned reading strate- gies constitute a powerful combined tool for helping readers comprehend and learn from expository texts. The essence ofthe approach is to teach readers to compensate for both knowledge and text deficits by learning to draw deeper inferences based on the active, constructive processing of connections that can be found in texts even when the cues are not immediately obvious. In our lab we have developed a reading strategy training program for promoting the 78 TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JANUARY-MARCH 2005 active and strategic processing of science texts by combining the above specific read- ing strategies through a method called self- explanation. Self-explanation refers to the pro- cess of explaining text contents to oneself while reading (Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glazer, 1989). There are a number of ben- efits to using the self-explanation method, in- cluding facilitating inference generation and repairing erroneous mental models by in- creasing the extent to which the reader mon- itors the ongoing comprehension process (Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher, 1994). Our program, called Self-Explanation Reading Training (SERT; McNamara, 2004; McNamara & Scott, 1999) uses the self- explanation technique to teach effective read- ing comprehension strategies (monitoring comprehension, paraphrasing, elaborative in- ferences, and generating bridging inferences). SERT is divided into three components: (1) Introduction, in which students are taught the reading comprehension strategies; (2) Demonstration, in which the strategies are demonstrated to students; and (3) Practice, in which students practice self-explaining science texts using the reading strategies. In this way, our program aims to promote both explicit understanding of reading strategies (declarative knowledge) and the skills of ap- plying the strategies w^hUe reading challeng- ing science texts (procedural knowledge). Thus far, research conducted with students in middle-school, high-school, and college lev- els has indicated that SERT increases self- explanation quality and subsequent compre- hension of science texts. Eor example, a study conducted with 38 middle-school students (O'Reilly & McNamara, 2004) demonstrated that students trained with SERT performed better on a comprehension assessment than untrained students. In a study conducted with 42 college undergraduates, McNamara (2004) found that SERT improved the quality of self-explanations (as reflected in students' in- creased use of elaboration and bridging strate- gies) and subsequent comprehension of sci- ence texts and that low-knowledge students benefited most from SERT training. Likewise, O'Reilly, Best, and McNamara (2004) found that SERT improved science text compre- hension among low-know^ledge high-school readers. In this study, low-knowledge readers trained by SERT performed better on a com- prehension task than low-knowledge readers trained using a different form of reading strat- egy training (Previewing) or low-knowledge readers assigned to a control condition. Current research in our lab has begun to fo- cus more closely on the effects of individual differences in reading strategy intervention, with the aim being to build a student- adaptive reading strategy tutor called Interac- tive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART; McNamara, Levinstein, & Boonthum, 2004). In its prototype, iSTART is an automated, interactive tutor, which cur- rently incorporates SERT but is being ex- panded to include other reading strategies. The current iSTART system continuously eval- uates what students know about the strategies and their ability to use the strategies so as to tailor scaffolding and feedback to the level of the student. Eor example, students struggling to produce elaborations are encouraged to "add more details" to their self-explanations. Evaluations of iSTART indicate that the sys- tem improves the students' use of reading strategies and comprehension of science texts at both the middle-school and college level (Magliano et al., 2005; O'Reilly et al., 2004a, 2004b). Our future research will continue to explore the relations between individual dif- ferences and the benefits of reading strategy training to develop reading strategy interven- tions that are increasingly adaptive to each stu- dent's needs. Preliminary findings suggest that auto- mated versions of reading strategy trainers are useful not only for individual intervention but also for assisting teachers to implement strat- egy training in educational settings such as the classroom. One of the factors impeding students' ability to acquire and practice effec- tive reading comprehension techniques stems from the limited explicit instruction regard- ing strategies for comprehending expository texts. The low level of explicit instruction Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts 79 in classroom settings may, in part, be caused by limitations in teachers' knowledge about reading strategies, or a limited allocation of classroom teaching time. Computerized pro- grams may make it easier to implement strat- egy training in schools because they can re- duce the demands on teachers. CONCLUSIONS This article has addressed problems stu- dents experience in comprehending their sci- ence textbooks by focusing on how attributes of texts (specifically factors involving text co- hesion) interface with attributes of readers (specifically world knowledge and discourse knowledge and strategies). Our discussion of remediation strategies has considered the ways in which researchers and educators can help students better comprehend the lan- guage of their science textbooks. One method is to match readers to texts, such that low- knowledge readers are given more cohe- sive texts to help overcome prior knowledge deficits. Text analysis tools (e.g., Coh-Metrix) allow us to grade text difficulty appropri- ately and distinguish low-cohesion from high- cohesion texts. Alternatively, research into text cohesion may be used to develop guide- lines for future textbook writing, or to open up the possibility of assigning different text- books to different individuals. A second method to overcome comprehen- sion difficulties is to teach students reading strategies. Many forms of strategy training are available to help students of various ages and levels overcome problems regarding the deep- level comprehension of science texts. 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