Children’s Use of Text Structure in the Recall of Expository Material

This study investigated whether superior recall for expository text could be attributed to the use of text structure as a retrieval cue or to some other memory factor. Elementary students read and recalled normal and scrambled versions of text. Children who were aware of text structure recalled significantly more of the normal passages than the scrambled, whereas for students who were unaware, there was no difference in recall between the normal and scrambled. That the aware group recalled more of the structured passage but not the scrambled suggests that it was use of structure, as opposed to a memory factor, that enhanced their recall. Results also indicated that many elementary students had not yet learned how to use text structure as a retrieval aid.