THE ROLE PLAYED BY THE RHETORICAL STRUCTURES / SCHEMA OF EXPOSITORY TEXT AND THEIR EFFECT ON READABILITY

For any reader, text can only be processed and comprehended meaningfully once placed in an overall framework or schema (Anderson, Pichert & Shirey, 1983; Lorch & Pugzles Lorch, 1985; Armbruster,1986). The schema enables the reader to situate the major themes, secondary themes, and supporting details in relation to one another in such a way that comprehension and recall are facilitated. Two types of schemas are believed to play a role in the comprehension and recall of information from text: content and textual (Anderson, Pichert & Shirey, 1983). Content schemas embody the reader’s existing knowledge about real and imaginary worlds whereas textual schemas contain knowledge about the conventions of organized discourse.

Readers comprehend a text when they are able to activate schemas that match the particular content and structure of the material. As they begin to read, readers search for schemas that elucidate the text, and using these, construct a partial and tentative model of the text’s meaning. This model serves to scaffold the continued search through the text and is progressively refined as the reader gathers more information from the text (Armbruster, 1986). Comprehension is thus dependent on the progressive refinement of a coherent model of the text’s meaning by the reader. According to schemata theory, therefore, meaning does not reside in the text alone, but is the product of the interaction of reader and text.

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2.2.1.1. TEXTUAL SCHEMATA AND THE DESIGN OF CONTENT-AREA TEXTBOOKS

Research has identified a number of textual schemas that need to be accessed by the reader. For the purpose of this study, however, the discussion will focus on higher order textual schemas at the level of extended discourse. Armbruster (1986) notes that two types of textual schema operate at this level: those for the rhetorical structures found across a wide variety of texts and those specific to a type of content. Armbruster further notes that the more general schemas found across a wide variety of texts appear to capture the fundamental patterns of human thought. The most common of these, reflected in a few basic text structuress are: listing, comparison/contrast, problem/solution, cause/effect and temporal sequence. Many researchers have found these to be basic to improved comprehension and recall among both first and second language speakers (Meyer, Brandt & Bluth, 1980; Foo, 1989; Goh, 1990; Carrell, 1984). Research has also shown that readers who have knowledge of textual schemata are able to comprehend main ideas with more ease, recall more specific information (Meyer et al., 1980; Meyer & Rice, 1984) and are better able to distinguish between important and unimportant information (Dole et.al.,1991). It has also been shown to help in the recall of topics that are unfamiliar to the reader (Taylor & Beach, 1984; Alvermann & Qian, 1994).

Although research suggests that the ability of the reader to discern and use text structure plays a major role in the success of comprehension, the author also plays an important role. The author determines how explicit the text structure is and how well it is structured. Content subject textbooks have been criticized as being ‘inconsiderate’ of the apprentice reader in not making rhetorical structures clear (Armbruster, 1984, 1986 ; Carrell, 1984 ; Sharp, 1999). As noted above, textbooks are not read in isolation and the reader’s context in terms of reading ability and cognitive development should be considered constantly by the author of the book. Research has shown that ‘considerate’ rhetorical structuring facilitates the comprehension of text for the first and to an even greater degree, the second language learner.

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Considerate rhetorical structuring includes clear signalling devices, titles, subtitles and the making of logical relationships explicit. Alastair Sharp (1999) conducted a survey among Chinese schools (secondary/high school level) in Hong Kong and produced a paper in which he discusses the use of English medium textbooks in bilingual situations. He argues that language and textual constraints both seem to inhibit the efficient reading of content subject textbooks in school. He emphasizes that although correctly selected vocabulary is vital in reading comprehension and recall, the way the text is structured also plays a role. He contends that this issue is given too little emphasis in the preparation of school textbooks by authors and publishers. He recommends and offers examples of improved writing (see Appendix D). His improvements offer clearer signalling devices, titles, subtitles, introductions, topic sentences and logical relationships are made more explicit. Bold numbering and additional elaboration are two further points that he notes help to make text more ‘considerate’ of the reader. In this connection Langhan cites Williams (Langhan 1990:91) when he emphasizes the importance, particularly in the beginning of a chapter, of giving the reader a summary/overview of the chapter, contents, their sequence and interrelationship.

The use of unprincipled paragraphing is another practice which tends to make texts ‘inconsiderate’ of the reader and especially the ESL reader and so impairs readability. Langhan (1990:89) writes of this ‘unprincipled paragraphing’ and notes the young ESL reader’s need for supportive text which provides clear, well organized paragraphs, ideas logically connected and propositions following on logically one from another. He cites Williams (1985) who pointed out that readability is greatly improved if the topic sentence is placed as early in the paragraph as possible. Conversely, if the topic sentence is nowhere near the beginning, the readability is greatly reduced.

Lanham emphasizes the danger of titles and headings being misleading (Langhan 1990:90) and so posing a serious readability problem for young ESL readers. He states that in light of the importance of a reader’s activated background knowledge for the construction of meaning during reading and given the likely linguistic and cultural limitations on the young ESL reader’s accessible background knowledge, it is crucial that headings should be both meaningful and predictive (Williams, 1985:56; Lanham 1986:9, 1990:4). He stresses that

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headings should be as specific as possible, thus enabling the reader to predict the contents of the section concerned.

In addition, Steinley (1987:117) notes that the reader can only make use of headings if the paragraphs under them are properly organized, and Meyer (1989:9) stresses again, the advantage to readability of topic sentences being placed at the beginning of a paragraph. In her discussion of the ‘Role of the Author’ in writing texts for scholars, Armbruster (1986) recognizes the responsibility of the author in producing well structured texts. She specifically refers to the ‘clues’ (as discussed above) that the authors use for text structures and recommends that these be explicit.

2.2.1.2. THE INFLUENCE OF RHETORICAL STRUCTURES ON PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ACTIVATION

Afflerbach (1990) investigated the influence of prior knowledge on the main idea construction strategies of expert readers when reading text where the main idea was implicit. Using readers from the field of chemistry, and texts that were both familiar and unfamiliar to the readers, he identified three methods or strategies that readers use for constructing main ideas in implicit text: automatic construction, the draft-and-revision strategy, and the topic/comment strategy.

He concluded that readers’ prior knowledge influenced the efficiency of a range of complex processes necessary for main idea construction, noting that these processes were performed more automatically (or efficiently) for text that was in a familiar content domain, freeing up cognitive resources for the main idea construction task. However, when these comprehension processes were not automatic, working memory resources were compromised (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Britton, Glynn & Smith, 1985).

His study offered several possible implications for education practice, among them that it is important to acknowledge the challenging nature of the main idea construction task. In addition, the results of the study demonstrated that if the reader’s prior knowledge for the text topic was insufficient, the difficulty of main idea construction is compounded.

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2.2.2. THE CONTRIBUTION OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND TEXT COHERENCE TO