Conceptual Pre-Structuring for Detailed Verbal Passages

In specific, meaningful printed passages various methods of conceptual organization can be used to increase students' understanding of key points of the passage. In a treatment by sex by ability level ANOVA, 124 Ss were randomly assigned to four types of “advance organizers”: (a) Completion pretest (CP), (b) True-false pretest (TF), (c) Sentence outline (SO), and (d) Paragraph abstract (PA). On a 20-item multiple-choice posttest, designed to measure specific and general facilitative effects, three orthogonal comparisons for the two posttest part scores were made. Covert treatment groups (PA and SO) received significant specific facilitation; no differences among methods were found for general facilitation.