Text Type and Text Structure: An Analysis of Three Secondary Informal Reading Inventories.

Reading educators (Cheek & Cheek, 1983; Roe, Stoodt, & Burns, 1978) urge secondary teachers to use informal reading inventories (IRIs) in order to diagnose students’ reading problems and to place students in textbooks at appropriate levels to optimize instruction. Advice of this nature is surely well-intended; nevertheless, educators have reservations about the merits of available IRIs. For example, readability levels of IRI passages (Gerke, 1980), passage dependency of questions (Marr & Lyon, 1980; Tuinman, 1971), classification of questions (Shell & Hanna, 1981), scoring criteria (Bormuth, 1969), validity (Cooper, 1952; Powell, 1971), and allowable errors or miscues (Ekwall, 1971; Harris & Sipay, 1980) have been the focus of serious questions by reading researchers. TEXT TYPE AND TEXT STRUCTURE: AN ANALYSIS OF THREE SECONDARY INFORMAL READING INVENTORIES MARY W. OLSON and M. K. GILLIS Southwest Texas State University San Marcos Reading educators (Cheek & Cheek, 1983; Roe, Stoodt, & Burns, 1978) urge secondary teachers to use informal reading inventories (IRIs) in order to diagnose students' reading problems and to place students in textbooks at appropriate levels to optimize instruction. Advice of this nature is surely well-intended; nevertheless, educators have reservations about the merits of available IRIs. For example, readability levels of IRI passages (Gerke, 1980), passage dependency of questions (Marr & Lyon, 1980; Tuinman, 1971), classification of questions (Shell & Hanna, 1981), scoring criteria (Bormuth, 1969), validity (Cooper, 1952; Powell, 1971), and allowable errors or miscues (Ekwall, 1971; Harris & Sipay, 1980) have been the focus of serious questions by reading researchers. A further source of concern is the IRI graded paragraphs. These passages should reflect current research findings on text type, text structure, and comprehension. For example, researchers have investigated readers' difficulties with narrative and expository text types (Berkowitz & Taylor, 1981; Olson, 1985). These studies consistently document narrative texts as easier for readers to understand than expository texts. Expositions represent the predominant text type at the secondary level; therefore, we would expect to find expository passages rather than narrative passages in secondary IRIs. If this is the case, the expository IRI passages would more appropriately assess students' reading ability for placement in secondary textbooks. If this is not the case and the secondary IRIs contained many narrative passages, students would find these passages less difficult. Consequently, teachers might place students at an inappropriately high level for the more difficult expository READING HORIZONS, Fall, 1987 --------------page 71 reading requi red in the secondary schools. Researchers have also identified the organizational structure inherent in well-formed texts (Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Meyer, 1975; Stein, 1979) and the comprehension difficul ties these st ructures pose for readers (Englert & Heibert, 1984; Fitzgerald & Spiegel, 1985; Hansche & Gordon, 1983; Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980). It is the organizational structure that provides a framework to convey the content of the text to the reader. Narrative text structure is described in terms of story grammar categories (Stein, 1979). Narratives that are well-formed include a setting and one or more episodes. Moreover, well-formed narratives are understood better than narratives that are fragmented or require readers to infer missing categories (Baker & Stein, 1981). On the other hand, expository text structure is described in ter ms of organizational, or rhetorical, st ructures that writers use to convey the relationships among ideas in the passage to the readers (Meyer, 1981; Niles, 1965). For example, Meyer (1981) describes five rhetorical st ructures in expository texts: causation, response, comparison, collection, and description. More organized structures, such as causation and comparison, appear to facilitate the understanding of content while content presented as a collection or description is more difficult to remember (Meyer & Freedle, 1984). We would suggest, therefore, that the organizational structure among the ideas presented in both narrative and expository passages is crucial to fair and accurate appraisal of students' reading abilities. For instance, if secondary IRIs contain narratives, then the narratives should be wellformed so that poor performance by students is not a function of passage structure. Conversely, if the text type is expository, it too should be clearly structured. Expository passages with a discernable rhetorical st ructure would be more likely to yield accurate information about the student. Furthermore, the particular rhetorical structures of the IRI passages would be of interest to teachers because some structures seem easier to comprehend than others. Despite the current interest in text type and text st ructure, secondary IRIs have not been analyzed for the text type of the passages. Neither has it been determined READING HORIZONS, Fall, 1987 --------------page 72 if narrative passages are well-formed or if expository passages have identifiable rhetorical structures. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to evaluate three secondary IRIs: the Advanced Reading Inventory (Johns, 1981), Content Inventories (McWilliams & Rakes, ] 979), and the Informal Reading Assessment (Burns & Roe, 1985) In terms of text type and text st ructure. Specifically, we wanted to know (1) if the passages in each secondary inventory were expository or narrative; (2) if the passage was a narrative, was it. a well-formed narrative? (3) If the passage was an expOSItIon, would the rhetorical st ructure be classified as description, causation/contrast, problem/solution, sequence, or definition/example? (4) Were there any passages with no discernable structure?