The Impact of Expository Text Structure Knowledge on Fifth and Eighth Grade Students’ Expository Writing

Susan Lareau

Joseph Pandolfio

Deborah Rand

Carolyn Turner

     Reader response activities are common curriculum elements in American classrooms today, ranging from pre-kindergarten to graduate level courses.  Although this component of literacy seems to be timeless, this was not always the case.  Louise Rosenblatt began facilitating small group discussions during her budding teaching days back in the 1930’s.  Prior to this, time given to discuss reading and reactions was a rarity.  Rosenblatt refers to her practice as experimentation on Barnard University’s part (where she was teaching at the time) to assimilate British Universities (Karolides, 1999).

As Rosenblatt implemented these responses to reading activities with her students she was developing her infamous “transactional theory”.  She was realizing each reader’s interpretation of a piece of writing was unique to the person and his or her interaction with the text (Karolides, 1999).  Louise Rosenblatt discusses the rationale supporting her belief in the “transactional theory” in an interview with a former student, Nicholas Karolides (1999).  She believes “meaning ‘happens’ during the interplay between the text and a reader” (p. 164).  Rosenblatt goes onto say she realized “reading is a selecting, organizing, synthesizing activity” (p. 164).  

     “The face of content area literacy instruction is changing.  Once associated exclusively with middle and high school instruction, today, as never before, educators are directing their attention to the importance of encouraging content area literacy instruction at even the earliest levels” (Moss, 2005, p. 46).  In the article, Searching Informational Texts: Text and Task Characteristics That Affect Performance, the author states, “Informational texts deal with relatively less familiar content and use text organizational patterns (e.g., compare and contrast, cause/effect) different from the traditional narrative structure” (Brown, 2003, p.1). With the current academic focus on reading instruction across the curriculum, we were interested to see if expository text structure knowledge would affect students’ expository writing.

   The purpose of our research, “The Impact of Expository Text Structure Knowledge on Fifth and Eight Grade Student’s Expository Writing” focuses on the relationship between student knowledge of expository text structures and the transfer of that knowledge to the students’ expository writing. 

  Currently an “ever-deepening crisis in adolescent literacy” exists according to a position statement for the Commission on Adolescent Literacy of the International Reading Association (1999).  The expectations of adolescent students to comprehend complex content are unlike any expectations set for previous generations of students, due in part to the complex technological demands of today’s workplace. 

  Alarming statistics from the 1998 Reading Report Card by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that approximately only sixty percent of U.S. adolescents could understand factual statements and less than five percent could elaborate on the meaning of the material read (Meltzer, 2001).  NAEP writing assessments also showed that few adolescents could write material with the amount of detail needed to support their main points.  If students can’t understand the science they are reading, how can they be expected to draw a correlation for an experiment, understand a scientific argument or write about cause/effect? These same questions can be asked with different disciplines such as history or mathematics.  Students must learn how to distinguish, identify and interpret the most important expository content and succeed in transferring this information into their expository writing.  As students are being pushed to read and understand more content, many students struggle with not only what the text is about but also how to read it.  Students who are unfamiliar with expository reading have difficulty understanding how to negotiate these texts because they lack schema for such genre and topics (Villano, 2005).

  Meltzer stresses that content area literacy should be taught in different disciplines because the skills necessary to understand a science text are not necessarily the same ones required for a history text.  A formidable point in her article is that it is the responsibility of all content area teachers to include literacy instruction in their curriculum (Meltzer, 2001).  Aulls (2003) discussed the point that one problem of instruction with a long history in research on literacy is how to improve the ability of middle grade students to comprehend and also write coherent expository prose. 

  Today’s adolescents in the 21st century working world will read and write more than at any time in human history (Vacca, 2002).  The will need advanced literacy levels to succeed in managing the vast quantities of information they will be confronted with in their professional and personal lives.  Compounding the problem is that as students enter middle and high school they receive little or no instruction in using reading and writing strategies to learn with texts (Vacca, 2002).

  As reported by Vacca, a recent report by the Carnegie Corporation of New York finds that more than 50% of students entering high school in the 35 largest cities in the United States read at or below the sixth grade level. While appearing skillful at reading, some students are only going through the rote process of reading and writing while they are unable to interpret the meaning of content area subject matter.  Although students receive instruction in rhetorical writing, they rarely associate writing with learning “by using writing to explore and interpret meaning that they encounter in texts and class discussions,” (Vacca, 2002, p. 3).

Problems/Challenges Contributing to Students’ Lack of Expository Writing Experience

  Many content area teachers feel that it isn’t their responsibility to include content literacy instruction in their curriculum or they feel they lack the experience necessary to teach reading (Meltzer, 2001).  Secondary education teachers are reluctant to see themselves as reading or writing teachers.  In order for secondary educators to embrace the changing role of content area teaching and teach reading and writing in the content areas, they must first “recognize reading and writing as meaning-making processes that can support their instructional goals, particularly those related to understanding content” (Jacobs, 2002, p.1).

  As a consequence of these beliefs, many teachers do not include reading and writing instruction in their curriculums. Without these opportunities to practice and reinforce content area reading and writing skills, students end up with fewer opportunities to build these skills. Compounding the problem of sporadic instruction is the fact that most of the students receiving content area literacy instruction are the brightest students and not necessarily the ones most in need of content area instruction in reading, writing and interpretation.  According to Meltzer (2001), these students are taught to “analyze, synthesize, debate, present and evaluate information from multiple sources” and these are the skills most in need by less accomplished students to make sense of content area material.

  Richard Vacca past president of the IRA and professor of literacy education at Kent State University voices a similar concerns about content area literacy instruction. Vacca notes that content literacy programs are emerging in middle and high schools but believes that it is important that all subject teachers share the responsibility of literacy development in middle grades and high school (2002).  He believes that more middle and high school teachers are aware of the needs of their adolescent students and are beginning to use instructional strategies incorporating content literacy.

  The OhioTrek study (Bertelsen & Fischer, 2003) conducted on ten and eleven-year-old students involved the use of multimedia and scaffolding to teach expository text and writing, which are subjects traditionally identified as difficult to learn and teach. One of the findings cited in the study is that students reach a “fourth grade slump” (as cited in Moss, Leone & Dipillo, 1997) which is partially due to the students’ inability to make meaning out of expository text.  Moss, Leone & Dipillo were cited in the OhioTrek study as echoing the sentiments of other research stating that if students today “are to survive in the Information Age it is imperative that they develop greater familiarity with and understanding of expository text” (as cited in Moss, Leone & Dipillo, 1997, p. 418).

  Performance on reading and writing non-fiction is the leading cause of lower performance on reading proficiency tests according to the OhioTrek study (Bertelsen & Fischer, 2003).  Demographic data in the study showed that students in low-income districts needed experience and practice to help them understand non-fiction materials.

  A study conducted by Susan Randolph Moore (1996) examined the impact of increasing students’ knowledge of expository text structure and whether it would build sixth grade students schemata for compare and contrast, and cause and effect. The research included a treatment group that received an “intervention” that taught text structure and a control group that did not receive specific instruction in expository text structure.  Nonetheless, in response to student needs, the teacher will continue to model and share with students the processes he or she used to construct an understanding of the text showing and sharing not only the meanings constructed but also the strategies used to do so (Nuefeld, 2006).

  Moore’s research yielded several insights into the effects of teaching text structure, including that the treatment group showed improvements in both awareness and recall of the expository text structures vs. the control group, which did not.  “The Treatment Group’s performance confirms the viability of designing instruction to raise levels of structural awareness. The Treatment Group, having been taught the characteristics of the rhetorical structure as well as a strategy for employing it in their reading and writing, showed a significant increase in levels of awareness.  When writing recall protocols, they included the superordinate ideas of the passage they had read, some elaboration of these ideas and key words generally used to signal the relationships implicit in the structure” (Moore, 1996, p. 15).  Moore also states that the results of this study replicate other findings whose purpose was to raise students’ level of text structure awareness (as cited in Armbruster, Anderson & Ostertag, 1987; Richgels & McGee, 1989; Taylor & Beach, 1984). 

  Because of the importance of text structure in comprehension and writing, the issue is not whether text structure instruction is effective, but what type of instruction is most effective (as cited in Englert & Hiebert, 1984; Horowitz, 1985; McGee, 1982). Students that were aware of text structure while reading produced better structure in their writing and were better comprehenders (as cited in McGee, 1982). Research findings suggest the importance of leveraging reading and writing relationships when creating text structure interventions or lesson plans.  Kragler (2005) notes that in their analysis of textbooks rather than a focus on comprehension instruction, the social studies and science texts primarily focused on assessing student understanding, therefore, with a focus on content the comprehension instruction that was offered was inadequate.

  As students move from the primary grades to the secondary grades the purpose of reading and writing changes.  In the primary grades, students’ main focus is to learn-to-read and when they move beyond fourth grade the purpose of reading changes to reading-to-learn (Jacobs, 2002).  Because of this shift in emphasis to reading-to-learn, it is imperative that students understand how expository text is formatted and how to interpret and extract the necessary information from the text.  Reading-to-learn involves problem-solving, understanding of the content presented in the text in addition to integration and association of any prior knowledge of the subject being read.  Teachers can facilitate this understanding by including integration of reading strategies into their content area teaching.

  Jacobs (2002) makes a connection between reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn.  She states that students write-to-learn when they write about their readings from the text and that the inquiry process strategy is most supported by research to improve composition.  The inquiry process treats writing as a problem-solving activity in which students (1) use their personal experience to support specific details; (2) critique and generalize about the text or take a stance or position on the topic; and (3) test their position or arguments by predicting possible opposing arguments and being prepared with a countering argument (Jacobs, 2002).  Students need specific instruction and practice in expository writing in order to accomplish the three steps outlined above.  Jacobs (2002) asserts, “If we have engaged our students well in reading-to-learn, then we will have also prepared them to draft well” (p.4).

  Focusing on content literacy in reading and writing in “Teaching Learners to Think, Read and Write more Effectively in Content Subjects,” Sinatra (2000) discusses the need for a paradigm shift from teacher-led direct instruction of global content topics to student-led inquiry of key content topics.  These topics should be studied in depth, using all of the language arts; listening, speaking, reading, and writing to help students learn the content.

  According to Sinatra (2000), if content area teachers shifted their teaching styles from direct instruction to a more indirect model that encourages student participation, taught text structure, and concept mapping, they would see positive results in their students’ ability to think, read and write in the expository format. Concept mapping creates a visual representation of what is being read and is one of the components of our lessons in our research project. 

  In “Integrating Reading and Writing to Teach Compare-Contrast Text Structure:  A Research-Based Methodology”, Shirley Dickson (1999) states that “Research in text structure, writing process, and integrated reading and writing provides evidence that these instructional components mutually support each other” (p.1).  Dickson’s statement is an affirmation of our research of the relationship between student knowledge of expository text structures and the transfer of that knowledge to the students’ expository writing. 

  A study conducted by Williams, Hall and Lauer (2004) on the benefits of teaching expository text structure to young at-risk learners demonstrated that even second grade students benefited from specific instruction in expository text structure.  Some of the conclusions drawn from the study were that knowledge of text structure organization improves comprehension and positively affects the ability to transfer this knowledge both orally and in written summaries.  This instruction, especially if it is geared toward a single text structure such as cause and effect that was used in the study, is effective in improving students’ comprehension of expository text.

  Some of the lessons taught in the Williams, Hall and Lauer study (2004) are similar to lessons used in our research.  These include the use of graphic organizers, teaching compare and contrast strategy questions, summarization, and instruction in “clue” words used in the cause/effect text structure. 

  A study conducted on the organization of U.S. History textbooks by Crawford and Carnine (2000), showed that 75-90% of classroom instruction is organized around textbooks and that many teachers have abandoned textbooks due to their poor organization.  The abandonment of textbooks is most evident in Reading and Language Arts (Crawford & Carnine, 2000).

  In order to facilitate understanding and long-term retention, the design of the text must be organized so that the structure is explicit and can be taught to students. Because many textbook publishers attempt to include any topic that a teacher would find valuable in a textbook, the result is “a mass of content so great that it is incomprehensible” (Crawford & Carnine, 2000).  Students must be taught how to navigate through expository text in order to identify important conceptual information.  These skills are critical to the student’s understanding of expository text and a primary goal of our research.

  Sinatra (2000) presents six major text structures that lend themselves to being graphically represented through mapping using graphic organizers.  The six text structures are sequence, topic development, classification, comparison/contrast, cause/effect, and persuasion. He presents lessons that are scaffolded through three distinct phases of instruction beginning with the Discussion/Modeling Phase (whole class), followed by a Guided Practice Phase (small group) and concluding with a Phase of Independent Application (individually).  All of these phases of instruction are included in our lessons for teaching the cause/effect text structure.

  Just as with the instructional approaches used by Sinatra, Moore ’s study (1996) utilized a similar approach in scaffolding lessons. First, students in the classes were guided through the process of writing a passage from information contained in a graphic organizer, followed by having small classroom groups writing the passages. In the final lessons, students individually and independently utilized the information from the graphic organizers and created passages for cause/effect and compare/contrast expository text structures. 

  Dickson (1999) also discusses a methodology aiding student knowledge of compare-contrast textual structure in her study.  Each lesson occurred in a block of two 45-minute instructional periods for social studies and language arts. Each teacher used explicit instruction, modeling, think alouds, graphic organizers, note sheets, and held interactive discussions between teacher and students. The lessons were scaffolded from concrete, direct teacher instruction to a gradual release of academic responsibility to the students that reflect today’s classroom containing students with wide ranging abilities, including students with learning difficulties. This same approach is used in our research study which also includes students with a wide spectrum of abilities including, ESL students and students with learning difficulties.

  Vacca (2002) points out that while content literacy programs are emerging in middle and high schools, he believes it is important that all subject teachers share the responsibility in literacy development.  More teachers, he writes, are aware of the needs of their adolescent students, and are finally beginning to use instructional strategies that incorporate content literacy.   He cites one example of a classroom in Ohio where the teacher has embedded content literacy instructional strategies into the teaching of U.S. history.  Many of the strategies used by the teacher were part of ongoing professional development workshops provided by his school district.  In this classroom, students were taught to construct graphic organizers reflecting the over arching text patterns of problem-solution, cause/effect, compare-contrast, description and sequence. These organizers help the students identify what ideas are important in a expository text, how they are related, and where to find specific examples of these in the text.  Vacca also explains the procedures and the instructional strategies that the teacher uses in carrying out content literacy instruction.  He concludes the article with a call for more staff development for middle and high school teachers that includes instructional strategy workshops, teacher inquiry projects, and action research in various content areas. 

  Sinatra (2000) points out that in order to effect change teachers must model the use of concept maps, provide guided practice in concept mapping and encourage progression toward using concept mapping independently.  This should be done in conjuntion with teaching expository text structure and allowing for more student led discussion.

  Jacobs (2002) states that teachers need to activate and organize students background knowledge and that they must effectively use strategies that bridge known to new knowledge, such as brain storming, using graphic organizers, cloze passages and encourage the development of students own questions through writing or interactive writing.  Along with Vacca, Jacobs talks of staff development, where content area teachers must examine their instructional goals to see how reading and writing to learn in the content areas can lead to a stronger development and a clearer understanding for students.

  Julie Meltzer in her article, Supporting Adolescent Literacy across the Content Areas, (2001) writes about how the Department of Education in Maine embraces the  Adolescent Literacy Support Framework (developed by Center for Resource Management (CRM).  The framework has four key components: Motivation, Literacy Strategies, Across the Curriculum, and Organizational Support.  Once again professional development is stressed, this time Meltzer supports the case for quality, structure, and implementation.  Without this professional development she writes that the success or the failure of such initiatives depends of the professional development staff receives district wide. 

  After an extensive search, few studies were found that paralleled our research, “The Impact of Expository Text Structure Knowledge on Fifth and Eighth Grade Student’s Expository Writing.”  The majority of the studies found focused on the need for expository text structure knowledge and its relationship to reading comprehension. Few studies were found with supporting material for the transfer of text structure knowledge from reading to the expository writing process. 

  Numerous studies approached the topic of teaching reading strategies in the content areas and went on to propose that reading instruction is the responsibility of all teachers, including content area teachers, due to the fact that, unfamiliarity with expository text structure interferes with student’s ability to understand the “to-be-learned” material (Bakken & Wheldon, 2002).  Sinatra (2000) notes students need direct instruction in expository text structure; and that concept mapping aids in the writing process.  The article does not claim direct instruction in expository text structure improved students’ expository writing with a transfer of strategies from the reading process to the writing process. Williams in her article, Strategic Processing of Text: Improving Reading Comprehension of Students with Learning Disabilities, states there is “little evidence that strategy use is maintained over time or transferred to other situations” (2000, pg. 3) We hope to answer two questions during our research.  (1) Do students possess background knowledge of text structure from their reading? (2) With direct instruction of the cause/effect expository text structure will we see a transfer of knowledge to the students’ expository writing?

  This qualitative study involved two classes, one fifth grade, and one eighth grade

located in the same urban district.  The participants consisted of 9 elementary and 7

middle school students.  All participants were from inclusion classrooms and no

distinctions were made between special education students and regular education

students during the study.  Students were chosen through convenience sampling.  Our

study is designed to measure the student’s impact of expository text structure knowledge

on their expository writing using cause/effect genre.

     Baseline data was collected through the triangulation of two types of instruments.  The

first instrument was (a) modified Cloze of an expository cause/effect passage.  This

modified Cloze consisted of 200-250 words. The second instrument (b) an open ended visual cue provided the participants with two pictorial representations of a cause/effect relationship. These visuals were used to elicit an open ended written response which provided evidence of the students’ expository writing knowledge using the cause/effect structure. Visuals provided a modification for inclusion students to respond with their peers. Participant responses to visuals were critically viewed through the use of a rubric.  This rubric measured participants’ understanding and application of necessary key elements of cause/effect writing. 

    To allow for consistency in the scoring of student work each researcher participated in the development of the parameters used in the rubric. Scoring was based on the format used on the Connecticut Mastery Test-Third Generation.  Each student’s writing score was based on two separate readings each producing a score between 0 and 4.  A third scorer was used when there was a discrepancy of more than one point between the judgments of the first two scorers.  The two scores for each essay were added to produce the final score for each student with a maximum score of 8.  In order to control bias due to student familiarity, the classroom teacher, as well as an objective scorer/researcher assessed the data.

  Prior to instruction, both instruments were administered in order to establish a baseline of the participants’ knowledge of expository text structure and its impact on their expository writing. In order to establish fair baseline data, all participants involved were assigned a number. Every third number was then selected from this list, thus allowing for a fair distribution of participants from the high, middle, and low ranges. This process also allowed for the inclusion of special education students from both classrooms.

  At midpoint of the study, the students’ knowledge of cause/effect text structure

and its effect on their writing was re-evaluated using different versions of each instrument. These instruments were administered only after the students had been exposed to the cause/effect text framework along with sufficient modeling, guided practice and independent application of the cause/effect writing framework.

  For the final assessment, a change was made to the visual cue instrument.  Instead of providing the participants with two pictorial representations of a cause/effect relationship, only one was provided.  This was done in order to ascertain whether or not participants had internalized the instruction of cause/effect genre.  In regards to the Cloze passages, all three fifth grade passages had a number of cause/effect signal words eliminated from the text. However, for grade eight, the third Cloze passage had an elimination of phrases indicating cause/effect relationships.

  According to McMackin & Witherell (2005) it is important to begin with a clear idea of the concept of the lesson and the expected outcome.  Therefore, the first six lessons were extensive and explicit.  Instruction began with assisting students in accessing information from expository texts. The strategy used for lesson presentation was scaffolding. “Scaffolding is a teaching procedure in which a teacher initially provides high levels of structure and support to students but over time reduces the structure and support until students are able to perform independently” (Harniss et al, 2001).

     Lessons began with whole-class-instruction. This was followed by lesson instruction that consisted of small group instruction that emphasized peer collaboration(as defined by R. Vacca).  The closing lesson focused solely on student independent practice.  During all lessons, the teachers in both classrooms facilitated intentional coaching and the students consistently practiced the application of strategies.

  Initially, whole class explicit instruction on cause/effect was modeled by the teacher including the use of think-alouds and graphic organizers. Both teachers actively encouraged student participation through verbal responses.

  After the introduction of new material, the lesson began to focus on group work

and instruction at the grade appropriate level of sophistication. The structure

of cause/effect reading/writing was part of the background knowledge for the 8th graders, but for the 5th graders this was a new concept. Students were encouraged to work within a group setting. With the completion of the group session, one member from each group shares and summarizes what was covered during the lesson.

  The final component of lesson development releases the responsibility of the learning to the student. Scaffolding of lessons bridges the gap between the goal of instruction and the student’s ability level (Vygotsky, 1978).

  In order to allow for validity, lesson design, the number of introductory lessons taught, and the time allotment for each lesson was controlled. (a) Both fifth and eighth grade instructors taught the same content in their lessons, but adjusted the sophistication level of materials to the particular grade.  (b) Fifth grade instruction consisted of a total of fifteen lessons, while eighth grade instruction consisted of only 10 lessons in order to compensate for the 8th graders prior knowledge of cause/effect.  (c) Each lesson was of 45 minutes duration.

     In exploration of our research topic, “The Impact of Expository Text Structure Knowledge on Fifth and Eighth Grade Students’ Expository Writing” our random sample group of participants consisted of 9 fifth grade students and 7 eighth grade students selected from a pool of 50 students that participated in our study.

    Two researchers scored the written response of each participant.  This was done in an attempt to insure objectivity and to reduce personal bias towards students. Each researcher assigned a score from 1 to 4 for each response.  The scores from the two scorers were added together to get a final score. A possible total of 8 points could be earned for the response.

“This is before and after pictures of Hurricane Katrina.  It was happen right at my sister’s birthday.  Lot of houses and cars were destroyed.  A lot of people died, lot of people lost clothing, food, and homes.  It was the badest hurricane ever.”

Final Score: 3. This response provides a cause/effect relationship, but the response lacks the use of cause/effect signal words.

“I made a cake for mom it was her birthday today.  We were going to throw her a birthday party.  So I put all the party stuff all around the house.  Then mom came and I jumped out.  We both ate the birthday cake.  We were so full we left one piece of cake.”

Final Score: 3. This response does not provide a cause/effect relationship, but the response utilizes cause/effect signal words.