Comprehension of Expository Text: Insights Gained From Think-Aloud Data

PURPOSE: To examine the kinds of explicit and implicit statements generated by school-age children with and without language impairments during comprehension of expository texts and to determine the relationship of these statements to comprehension performance. METHOD: Forty 4th-grade children with and without language impairments participated in individual think-aloud sessions (verbalizing thoughts aloud). During the sessions, children were asked to listen to expository passages 1 sentence at a time, make comments after each sentence, and then answer questions and recall the passages. The comments or verbal protocols that children generated during the think-aloud sessions were transcribed and analyzed. The relationship of verbal protocols to comprehension performance was evaluated. RESULTS: Findings suggested that the ability to paraphrase passages was closely related to measures of expository text comprehension. CONCLUSIONS: The use of data obtained during think-aloud sessions may be useful to supplement information gained from traditional measures of comprehension for children with and without language impairments.