ABSTRACT
Current theories about comprehending and memorising texts comment on the relevance of active processing during reading This active processing is necessary to achieve a coherent representation that includes the construction of a macrostructure and a situational model of the text content. This chapter describes an instructional programme that is designed to improve two important strategies: (a) drawing out main ideas from texts, and (b) constructing outlines (structural summaries of texts).
Taking this theoretical perspective, an experiment was performed to evaluate the impact of a training programme on the strategies mentioned above of secondary school students. In a pretest session, subjects were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: advance outline (where subjects were given a previous outline of the text), outline construction (in which they were required to elaborate the outline by themselves), and no outline (the control condition). They were given a four-session instruction programme. The first two sessions included a brief explanation of what the main ideas of the text meant and practice in drawing them out from different texts. The two final sessions consisted of practice on the elaboration and use of text outlines based on the main ideas. Again, different texts were used for this purpose. Finally, subjects were given a posttest session to test the effects of training, in which the preliminary experimental conditions were reinstated.
184 This article reports some of the main results from this experiment, as well as a discussion of their implications for an educational framework.
