My Problem with Teaching Text Organization

Years ago, I posted a blog that recommended teaching “text structure” (March 17, 2019). Such instruction can improve reading comprehension – as proven by copious numbers of rigorously designed research studies carried out with a wide range of students (e.g., across the grades, English Learners, kids with learning disabilities).

Texts are not just lists of sentences. Authors organize what they have to say so that readers can follow the discourse and remember the information

For example, stories depend on plot structure or story grammar. Characters have goals and confront problems in trying to achieve those desired outcomes. Accordingly, stories include one or more events with settings, characters, problems, attempts to solve the problems, outcomes, and reactions to the outcomes. Knowing plot structure makes it easier for readers to anticipate what’s going to happen, to seek key information, and to later retrieve that information from memory.

Informational text structure tends to be a bit more complicated. While stories gain complexity through variations on that basic structure (e.g., altered time sequences, introduction of multiple characters with conflicting problems), expository text does that through the combination of multiple structures. These rhetorical structures include description, collection, sequence, problem-solution, cause-and-effect, comparison, hierarchy.

The research is clear: Readers benefit from recognizing and using such structures when they read. Teaching those rhetorical moves can be, and often is, beneficial.

So why revisit this issue now? Because I have a bone to pick with this approach.

Not that I disagree with the idea of teaching rhetorical structure, just that I have come to believe it to be incomplete and, sometimes, misleading.

For instance, a good deal of scientific writing is about causation, even when a text isn’t organized around a “cause-and-effect” structure.

A science passage may devote many words to a detailed description of an experiment using a “sequential” structure. But a good science reader must zero in on the causal relations implied by such a text. What did the experiment do to cause the outcome? What causal relationship did the study reveal?

RELATED: Eight Ways to Help Kids Read Complex Text

The author organized the information sequentially to describe how the scientists went about determining or proving causality, but causality was the real point of the matter. Readers focused on the sequence (the rhetorical vehicle) instead of the causation (the substantive purpose) will not do well in a science class

For the most part, text structure pedagogy tends to neglect the underlying purposes for the rhetorical structures that it emphasizes.

Here’s a different example.

I was asked at the last minute to deliver a demonstration lesson focused on reading in a fourth-grade social studies class. I quickly skimmed the chapter (and the book), typed up a graphic organizer, printed 25 copies, and hurried off to class.

My plan was to focus on text structure – but not text structure studied in most of the research.

Fourth-grade social studies often focuses on world cultures (e.g., Egypt, Greece, Rome). In this case, the textbook devoted a chapter to each of those civilizations. Each chapter tackled the history, economics, government, geography, and culture (e.g., arts, language, religion) of a particular civilization.

My graphic organizer encouraged students to summarize information into each of those categories.

It was not that the chapter included no comparisons, sequences, descriptions, or problem-solutions. In fact, it was rife with those rhetorical moves. But I thought those content categories to be more salient and pertinent to the purposes of social studies.

Think about it. Getting students to focus on civics, economics, and geography is more central to understanding social studies, than getting them to focus on problem-solution, cause-and-effect, description, and the like. The content structure will almost always be more specific to the knowledge we are trying to develop.

Instead of focusing reader attention on the author’s presentation strategy, we should get them thinking about the information itself. 

If kids are reading about biomes, we can get them to identify the various collections of facts, sequences, causes-and-effects or any of the other rhetorical structures the author may have chosen to use. But it would usually be better to emphasize that the chapter explores five types of biomes (aquatic, grassland, forest, desert, tundra) and five categories of information about each (flora, fauna, climate, relationship among those, geographic placements).

When scholars began examining the role that discourse structure plays in reading comprehension, they acknowledged the possibility of relying on alternative structures, not necessarily the ones studied. Those acknowledgements tended to be in vague asides rather than specific prescriptions. I suspect they intended the kinds of idiosyncratic content organizations that I am referring to.

Obviously, this is not an “either or” issue. Readers can rely both on the content organization and the author’s rhetorical strategies. Nevertheless, we need be careful not to allow the latter to obscure the former. When teachers get students to grapple with how information is presented rather than on the information itself, mixed results seem likely. Doing that should help students to remember more information from the text – a real plus – but sometimes it does this at the expense of undermining understanding – like obscuring the causal emphasis in science or leading students to ignore the nature and purpose of social studies as a discipline.

The trick is to not allow the structure to sidetrack meaning.

Recently, there have been arguments about comprehension teaching. Should we teach strategies like the use of text organization? Or should the emphasis be on mastering the content of the texts (building knowledge)? A focus on the identification and use of a text’s content organization is valuable because it contributes to the accomplishment of both.

I have come to think of this kind of content organization as being akin to the specialized vocabulary of a subject. Those “tier 3” vocabulary terms tend to be labels for key concepts about a particular topic. Words like organism, climate, ecosystem, adaptation, taiga, tundra, canopy, understory, and so on will not necessarily have much general value for supporting the reading of texts on other topics. But knowing their meanings and relationships is an essential part of having knowledge of biomes and for being able to read well about them.

Understanding that a biome will include organisms (flora and fauna), non-organic or abiotic elements (like rock, water, or soil), climate, and their inter-relationships should help students to make sense of a text that is organized in that way. But understanding this structure is more than that. Recognizing the major elements of a concept and how those elements effect each other is a substantial part of knowing the subject. The student who focuses on trying to understand this substantive content organization will not only improve their reading comprehension but will increase their content knowledge.

As with tier 3 vocabulary, these content structures will not necessarily generalize to other texts, while the rhetorical structures will. Knowing those four key elements of a biome won’t buy you much when it comes to reading a social studies chapter on the Great Depression.

That content structure itself may not be immediately transferable to other subjects and other texts. What can transfer is the insight that authors organize their content, and that comprehension can be enhanced by identifying and using the author’s organizational scheme. Those common rhetorical structures may be useful, but they will rarely be as central to the knowledge we want students to gain as these content structures are.

Teaching kids to identify text structure is a really good idea. However, focusing those efforts on how the content is structured will usually be more beneficial than on the common rhetorical structures. This approach seems to be more consistent with the kind of schema building emphasis of some of the best recent studies on knowledge building through reading (e.g., Mosher, Burkhauser, & Kim, 2024).


READ MORE: Shanahan on Literacy Blogs

References

Bogaerds-Hazenberg, S. T. M.,  Evers-Vermeul, J., &  van den Bergh, H. (2020).  A meta-analysis on the effects of text structure instruction on reading comprehension in the upper elementary grades. Reading Research Quarterly, 1– 28. 

https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.311

Hall-Mills, S. S., & Marante, L. M. (2020). Explicit text structure instruction supports expository text comprehension for adolescents with learning disabilities: A systematic review. Learning Disability Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/0731948720906490

Hebert, M. Bohaty, J. J., Nelson, J. R., & Brown, J. (2016). The effects of text structure instruction on expository reading comprehension: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108(5), 609-629. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.311

Bonnie J. F. Meyer, Brandt, D. M., & Bluth, G. J. (1980). Use of Top-Level Structure in Text: Key for Reading Comprehension of Ninth-Grade Students. Reading Research Quarterly, 16(1), 72–103. https://doi.org/10.2307/747349

Mosher, D. M., Burkhauser, M. A., & Kim, J. S. (2024). Improving second-grade reading comprehension through a sustained content literacy intervention: A mixed-methods study examining the mediating role of domain-specific vocabulary. Journal of Educational Psychology, 116(4), 550-568. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000868

Meyer, B. J. F. (1975). The organization of prose and its effects on memory. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.

Meyer, B. J. F., & Ray, M. N. (2011). Structure strategy interventions: Increasing reading comprehension of expository text. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 4(1), 127-152.

Pyle, N., Vasquez, A., Lignugaris/Kraft, B., Gillam, S., Reutzel, D., Olszewski, A., . . . Pyle, D. (2017). Effects of expository text structure interventions on comprehension: A meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(4), 469-501. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.179

Roehling, J. V., Hebert, M., Nelson, J. R., & Boharty, J.J . (2017). Text structure strategies for improving expository reading comprehension. Reading Teacher, 71(1), 71-82.

Shanahan, T., Callison, K., Carriere, C., Duke, N. K., Pearson, P. D., Schatschneider, C., & Torgesen, J. (2010). Improving reading comprehension in kindergarten through third grade: A practice guide. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sci­ences, U.S. Department of Education.

Wijekumar, K. (K.), Meyer, B. J. F., & Lei, P. (2017). Web-based text structure strategy instruction improves seventh graders’ content area reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(6), 741–760. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000168

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B. J. F., Lei, P., Hernandez, A. C., & August, D. L. (2018). Improving content area reading comprehension of Spanish speaking English Learners in grades 4 and 5 using web-based text structure instruction. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 31(9), 1969-1996. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9802-9

Williams, J. P., Kao, J. C., Pao, L. S., Ordynans, J. G., Atkins, J. G., Cheng, R., & DeBonis, D. (2016). Close analysis of texts with structure (CATS): An intervention to teach reading comprehension to at-risk second-graders. Journal of Educational Psychology, 198, 1061-1077. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000117

 

LISTEN TO MORE: Shanahan On Literacy Podcast