Using Relevance Prompts: An Exploratory Study to Promote Eighth Graders’ Comprehension and Retelling of Narrative Text

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study investigated the effects of modifying eighth grade students’ purposes for reading through a prompt designed to increase engagement with the text. The current study was conducted using a randomized between-subjects design, with a relevance prompt as the between-subjects factor and reader proficiency as a covariate. A sample of eighth grade students (N = 32) were stratified as proficient or struggling and randomly assigned to either the relevance (n = 16) or no relevance (n = 16) condition. Students in the relevance prompt condition were asked to make personal connections to a narrative text as they read. Results indicated statistically significant differences favoring the relevance prompt condition when reader proficiency was considered. These preliminary results suggest that prompting adolescent struggling readers to make connections with text can increase comprehension.

Keywords:

• Adolescent
• comprehension
• reading
• relevance prompts