ABSTRACT
This chapter explores techniques for analyzing the structure and improving the understandability of science prose. It is concerned with techniques for increasing students’ understanding of scientific prose, where understanding is measured by tests of creative problem solving in the domain of the passage. The chapter discusses three parts: structural analysis of scientific prose provides techniques for distinguishing between explanative and non-explanative information in a passage and improvement of problem-solving performance provides summaries of research on whether techniques that enhance students’ learning of explanative information also improve their problem-solving performance. It also includes implications for text design and reading strategies give some concrete examples of how to improve the radar, supertanker and lion passages. A verbatim processing strategy should encourage subjects to focus on the details within each segment of the passage. The major research effort on text design carried out in our lab has involved the study of how advance organizers influence learning from scientific prose.
