The generalizability of story grammar training across setting and tasks

Reading achievement depends in part on children's ability to employ strategies to monitor their comprehension, that is on children's use of metacognitive skills. An experimental intervention program created to foster such skills was evaluated. The story grammar training was designed to increase both strategic reading behavior and explicit, observable comprehension monitoring. Fourth-grade (N = 20) and fifth-grade (N = 16) children were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Maintenance was examined using free and probed oral recall, notetaking, and summarization of brief narrative and expository texts. Generalization was assessed through free and probed written recall of a lengthy text, which required both strategic reading and summarization skills for adequate comprehension. Skill acquisition was clearly demonstrated; trained readers were able to recall and summarize passages better than untrained readers. The evidence for generalization was more equivocal: although trained readers' free recall was significantly better than that of untrained readers, their probed recall was not. Provision of metacognitive skills that promote active comprehension monitoring, then, appears to provide children with the tools needed for independent reading. Programs designed to provide such skills may aid efforts to prevent reading failure.