Do Argument Tasks Promote Intertextual Reading Strategies? A Study Relating Spontaneous Note-Taking, Self-Reported Strategies, and Multiple Text Comprehension

• In Event: Multiple Documents, Sources, and Structures

Abstract

This study investigated multiple text processing across two different task instructions in relation to post-reading comprehension and strategy awareness. Forty-four undergraduates read multiple texts about climate change to write an argument or summary. Analysis of students’ spontaneous notes taken during reading suggested that intertextual elaboration strategies and drawing on larger amount of texts during note-taking related to deeper comprehension for argument writers; summarizers displayed no such relationships. Relationships between note-taking and self-reporting of strategies suggested that both groups were metacognitively aware of the multiple text strategies they adopted during reading, however the two groups appeared to rely on different cues. Discussion focuses on contributions to multiple text strategy research, and the educational importance of argument tasks.

Authors

• Aaste Hagen, University of Oslo

• Jason Lawrence Braasch, University of Memphis

• Ivar Braten, University of Oslo