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Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension of Expository Texts

Shannon Simmons

COE 501: Introduction to Research and Evaluation in Education

Fall B 2017

Dr. Margarita Pivovarova

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Strategies for Improving Comprehension of Expository Texts

Reading for understanding is a vital skill for readers of all ages (Meyer, B. J., & Ray, M.

N., (2011). The development of expository reading and writing skills is critical for 21st century

students and it is no secret that many students struggle when making the transition between

“learning-to-read” in primary grades and “reading to learn” in secondary grades; as explained by

Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin (1990). In primary grades, students are exposed to narrative stories.

Later, when exposed to the demands of secondary level readings which are mostly expository,

students unprepared and find these texts to be cumbersome and overwhelming. Reading

instruction at the primary level tends to focus on skills that do not adequately prepare students

for the challenging expository texts awaiting them in middle school and beyond (Fang, 2008).

Ultimately, if students are unprepared for the demands of expository text in secondary grades

they will not be ready for the demands of college level expository reading and writing once they

graduate.

Each year, in our school district, many students are graduating high school without the

ability to critically read and analyze expository texts. Students who cannot successfully

comprehend expository texts will struggle to be successful at the college level and will waste

time and money on remedial course work. The trouble our school district is currently facing is

that high school students are arriving with no ability to work with expository text. Ultimately, if

we as a district expect students to become proficient in their ability to interpret and comprehend

expository texts by the time they take the CAASPP in their 11th grade year, we must work

toward proficiency with expository comprehension throughout every grade level in the students’

educational K-12 experience. In this literature review, various strategies to improve student

comprehension of expository text will be examined.

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School and Classroom Context

Located inland, in Southern California, Beaumont Unified School District represents a

varied population of multi-generational Beaumont residents as well as residents who are new to

the area due to affordable housing and job proximity. Many people commute to Orange County,

Riverside, and Los Angeles for work and then return to the Beaumont area to live with their

families. Many people are drawn to Beaumont because of its small town feel. Beaumont Unified

School District is home to seven elementary schools, two middle schools, one alternative

education school, an adult school, and an online learning K-12 environment. According to

EdData’s District Summary (2016), the school district enrolled 9,975 students for the 2016-17

school year. Special circumstances within our district include 59% of our students who come

from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, 8% or so of our students who are English

Learners, and 9% of our students that have disabilities. Because the district information

regarding student testing performance is broken down by site and grade level, the following

information will focus on Beaumont High School, specifically rather than the district as a whole.

During the 2015-16 academic year, Beaumont High School enrolled over 2560 students.

For the current school year, over 3000 students are enrolled. Our student body is somewhat

diverse. Approximately 6% of students are African American, 1.3% American Indian, 3% Asian,

50% Hispanic/Latino, and 34% White. As a school site, Beaumont High School employed

approximately 100 teachers during the 2015-16 school year. Our site offers an array of diverse

programs and course offerings including many CTE (Career-Tech Ed) options and we also have

a variety of multi-cultural and extracurricular on-campus clubs, activities, and support groups

(Beaumont High School School Accountability Report Card Reported Using Data from the

2015-16 School Year, 2017).

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As far as student proficiency is concerned, approximately 48% of our students in the

district met or exceeded Grade Level Common Core State Standards for English Language

Arts/Literacy on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) in

2015-16. At the high school level, 95.7% of 11th grade students enrolled in 2015-16 were tested

for ELA/Literacy proficiency on the CAASPP and their proficiency rate was just over 58%

(Beaumont High School School Accountability Report Card Reported Using Data from the

2015-16 School Year, 2017) We have a lot of room for growth in terms of our proficiency rate in

ELA Common Core Standards. One area in particular that seems to be a struggle for our students

is in the area of comprehension and analysis of expository texts. Part of what the CAASPP

measures is college readiness for reading and writing skills. This part of the CAASPP is known

as the Early Assessment Program (EAP). Eleventh grade students within our district who took

the ELA/Literacy portion of the CAASPP in the 2015-16 school year were only 22% “ready”,

36% “conditionally ready”, and 41% “not ready” for college level reading and writing courses at

the 100 (or equivalent) level. These results suggest that our students, on the whole, are largely

unprepared for reading and writing at the college level, particularly when it comes to nonfiction

expository selections. Students are struggling to analyze, comprehend, and work with expository

reading and writing selections, which is what the EAP measures. It is important for students

graduating high school to be ready to navigate the increasingly complex tasks expected of them

in a college setting. The EAP exam, taken as part of the CAASPP in 11th grade, measures

students ability to comprehend expository text and results for our students show that the majority

of them are not prepared to graduate and complete college freshman level English coursework.

Purpose
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The purpose of this literature review is to explore research on instructional strategies that

will improve reading comprehension amongst K-12 students when reading expository texts. Our

district’s preparation for the CAASPP, taken by all 11th graders, must begin in primary grades

and continue throughout secondary education. In addition, the strategies used to teach expository

text needs to be purposeful, intentional, and research based. According to McCormick and Zutell

(2015), reading expository texts is often more difficult for students than typical story reading

(…as cited in Roehling, J. V., Hebert, M., Nelson, J. R., & Bohaty, J. J. , 2017). The

characteristics of expository text that are challenging for students include: technical vocabulary,

dense facts and information, unfamiliar content, cognitively demanding concepts, and complex

text structure (Roehling, J. V., et. al., 2017). If teachers are not equipped with the right types of

strategies to facilitate students’ abilities with expository text, then students will not improve their

comprehension of expository literature.

Rationale

The rationale behind this research project is that students at Beaumont High School are

struggling to demonstrate readiness for community college and four-year college reading and

writing classes as evidenced by their performance on the EAP portion of the ELA/Literacy

CAASPP test. One of the district goals is that, “all students will have the essential skills to

effectively function in a post-secondary educational setting or the world of work”. In order for

our students to master the skills needed to be effective in a college educational setting, their

performance on the EAP, as well as their comprehension and ability to analyze and work with

expository texts, needs to improve. As a school site, we have worked to address this dilemma in

a few ways, but we need district wide strategies to implement across all grade levels.
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As a site, we offer an Expository Reading and Writing Curriculum (ERWC) course

taught to 12th graders who are “conditionally ready” on the CAASPP/EAP. These students who

are “conditional” get to take the ERWC course in 12th grade and if they earn a C or better all

year, they are able to opt out of the entrance exams needed to test into community and four year

college (for the Community College and California State University systems) and are allowed

direct entry into English 100 level courses without having to complete remediation courses

beforehand. Students who test “ready” also are able to bypass the entrance exams and do not

require any remediation courses. The problem observed on Beaumont High’s campus is that we

have a plan to deal with students who are “ready” or “conditionally ready” but we have no plan

to deal with 41% of our students who are “not ready”. Since only 11th graders test, we need to

do more to actively prepare our students across the district so they are better prepared to achieve

or nearly achieve proficiency on the EAP/CAASPP in ELA/Literacy. Aside from an ERWC

course to enhance a select group of students’ proficiency with expository texts, there has to be

more specific short-term strategies to use on a regular basis that will improve all students’

proficiency rates with expository texts. Students across every grade level need to be challenged

to interact more appropriately with expository texts improving their abilities with

comprehension, vocabulary, questioning (the content, the author, each-other's views), analysis,

synthesis, text-structure.

Questioning and analyzing expository text can be a daunting task for students to tackle.

However, it is critical that students receive exposure to this skill and that they become proficient

at it. Taking action on adolescent literacy: an implementation guide for school leaders (2007)

explains that there are many reasons students need practice questioning texts. They explain that

questioning has been proven effective in improving literacy abilities, including reading
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comprehension. Also, questioning a text and examining a text helps to improve and develop

metacognitive skills, and activates prior knowledge which in turn improves comprehension.

Many stages of the writing process require the ability to question. For example, completing

research requires that students be able to frame good questions to guide inquiry (Irvin, Meltzer,

& Dukes, 2007). Questioning and examining texts in a large part of the work students do with

expository texts but they are struggling to actually do it. What can be done to help students with

this process and why is this process so challenging for Beaumont students?

Vaca (1998) explains that, “expository texts have their own unique structures that are

different from those of narrative text, and most students, regardless of their reading ability,

struggle at times with expository text” (...as cited by Dymock & Nicholson, 2010). There are

many reasons why this is true. Expository text contains challenging and sometimes foreign

vocabulary. In addition, topics can represent experiences that students have not had exposure to.

Lastly, unlike a narrative text that has one structure, exposition can have multiple text structures

within the same article (Dymock & Nicholson, 2010). As a result, teachers can find expository

texts challenging to present to students. It can be difficult to teach students the abstract skill sets

they need to excel in their comprehension and ability to work with expository texts prompting

the need for a variety of specific and frequent strategies that scaffold the complexity over time.

At our school site, we have access to different media to push expository texts and assess

students’ abilities with those texts. However, we are missing the day-to-day strategies and

cohesiveness to do it in an optimal way.

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