Reading+in+the+WWW

I have picked out some of what I consider to be the most relevant parts for our understanding of how cognitive and metacognitive strategies can help in reading, particularly on the world wide web. In their overview, Chun and Plass explain how they will be looking at 'how the use of multimedia can help reading. They conducted a study involving 160 second year German students, using a multimedia application called //Cyberbuch.// They were testing to see if the use of a 'dynamic visual organizer' benefits general comprehension, and whether a combination of visual and verbal information is more helpful that verbal information alone. This is one of the cognitive strategies mentioned in CALLA and the Foresee Approach, classed under 'imagery' ('the use of visual images to understand and remember new information.') Chun and Plass mention that a lot of previous research suggests that various visual advance organizers do indeed facilitate comprehension, particularly video.
 * __Summary of and Important Points from Chun, D and Plass, J, //Facilitating Reading Comprehension with Multimedia,// System, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 503-519, 1996__**

There have been a number of studies and a fair amount of research along similar lines, which explore and support the idea of how context and background knowledge can help comprehension and retention: Ausubel (1961) was one of the earliest to suggest that advance organizers - 'devices that activate relevant background knowledge' can be used to aid both the understanding and retention of reading. Omaggio (1979) used a number of different visuals in an attempt to see which ones aided comprehension. Hadley (1993) tried using visuals which provided relevant and non-confusing background knowledge in an attempt to help the students to follow what they were reading. Hudson (1982) experimented using pictures instead of vocabulary definitions to help students, and found that these were much more useful for aiding comprehension. Taglieber //et al//. (1988) believed that visuals before reading, along with questions intented to involve the students in what was to come, resulted in a much greater involvement and engagement with the text.'In addition, they consider the pre-reading activities used in the experiment as motivational devices.' (p505) I think that the above point is a very useful one - the way that visuals and other pre-reading activities can be used to motivate students. ) In the above-mentioned Hanley study, video proved to be significantly more effective than the use of pictures in helping both comprehension and retention.

In Chun and Plass's study, they looked at both video (as an advance organizer) and the use of 'multimodal annotations for the more difficult vocabulary items.' (p510) During their reading the students were able to look up any words in the program which had been annotated. It was very simple for them to do this - only requiring a click of the mouse on the required word. Different words had different types of annotation: three types were used: definition, picture/video and audio. A very useful feature for the researchers was that the program was able to record every action taken by each user, clearly showing the different behaviour of each user, and the group as a whole. After the reading activity students were given a vocabulary test (asked to translate the word from German into English), and then were asked to write a 'recall protocol', summarizing as much as they could about the story. Students were asked to write their recall protocol in L1, as this was thought to have a much higher level of success than doing it in L2. Their results showed (p512) that the students who watched the advanced organizer video preview which contained more direct and explicit information achieved much higher scores. (There were three groups of students tested. The first group watched an advanced organizer which was 'rather abstract in content' whereas, groups two and three watched a revised version which was revised to be more 'direct and explicit.' Of the twelve Idea units/Propositions mentioned in the video, the first group recalled a mean of 2.8, whereas groups two and three recalled 5.81 and 5.68 respectively.) (Much stronger!) This would seem to support the studies mentioned above. Words which were annotated with visuals were remembered to a much greater extent than those which were either annotated verbally or not at all.

For a clearer understanding of the above information/data, you can look at the tables in the report; a link to which is provided below. Mayer and Sims (1994) are stated as believing multimedia software to be one of the most significant things when it comes to helping students make connections between the verbal and the visual. Multimedia is thought to help make these connections more easily, and also to help students retain them in their long-term memory. (Contributed by Caroline Coyle) The full article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCH-3VWC3K8-7&_user=6991156&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000010021&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=6991156&md5=2b89e0d606ed2238fe2f13b0b27f1b19 

Thursday, March 05, 2009 7:07 PM Reading on the Internet: The Link Between Literacy and Technology **[|Elizabeth Schmar-Dobler]** [] Though Dobler talks about strategies that students can use to comprehend expository writin on the WWW it can be extended to reading in general on the WWW. Dobler states that " Being able to successfully use the Internet places special demands on the reader ([|Kamil & Lane, 1998]). First, the Internet reader must be able to handle the sheer volume of text, which can be described as massive. The potential for gathering information is virtually unlimited. Through links, or Internet connections, a reader can access innumerable sites related to the original idea or topic of a search. Second, much Internet content has blinking graphics, vivid color, and lots of eye-catching phrases that can guide or distract from the reading. A reader must be able to evaluate all the features of a webpage and quickly decide which one will likely be the most helpful in accessing information" Third, most of the text on the Internet is expository. Being able to read such text requires familiarity with its concepts, vocabulary, and organizational format. In an analysis of 50 websites, 48 contained expository text, while 2 sites contained narrative text (Kamil & Lane, 1998). Expository text is usually found on the Internet written as hypertext where highlighted elements within it, such as a word or phrase, are linked to other texts. Each link can lead to a definition, additional information, or a video or audio example related to the original linked word or phrase. Strategic Readers of Print Text : The following is a figure that depicts the reading strategy of print text



Connections Between Literacy and Technology Internet reading appears to apply similar reading strategies as those used with print text reading. Figure 2 describes the reading strategies identified in the comprehension model and compares how these strategies are used when reading on the Internet. An additional strategy (navigate) has been added to the model to describe the skills needed by the Internet reader to not only make meaning from text but to also be able to locate the information within an Internet text.



