Contribution of Reading Skill to Learning from Expository Texts

Our study investigated the importance of reader aptitudes (prior knowledge and reading skill) in the processing of an expository text. We analyzed self-explanations produced by 42 high-school students while reading an expository text about thunderstorms. Specifically, we focused on students attempts to paraphrase information (i.e., restate sentences in their own words) and elaborate on the sentence content (e. g., connect information in different sentences to build a global representation of the text). Our findings suggest that reading skill is important for the active processing of expository texts. Skilled readers produced more elaborations than less skilled readers, and also a more diverse range of strategies, which may be crucial for supporting learning. Implications for learning from text are discussed.