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Abstract
The role of the teacher in enhancing students’ reading comprehension was examined in this study. Forty‐four graduate students were asked to read either a natural or degraded version of two difficult texts and to complete a 37‐item multiple‐choice test. Half of the students received a 30‐minute teacher presentation prior to the reading of each text, and the other half of the group was asked only to read, study, take notes from the text and answer the questions. Each group was given 90 minutes for the task. Results indicated a significant main effect for the teacher presentation group. Students who received the teacher presentation outperformed students who did not receive the teacher presentation on measures of vocabulary and comprehension. No significant differences were found for the students’ performance on the natural text versus the degraded text or for the combined treatment of teacher presentation and text. The results of this study suggest that the teacher is a more significant factor in the comprehension of lengthy natural texts than is the ease of the text itself.
Notes
A well‐respected authority in the field of reading, Dr. Singer passed away this year.