Paragraph structure in reading comprehension: an exploratory study

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of paragraph structure in the reading comprehension process. Reading a text is an integrative process, in which information processed at a lower level is progressively integrated with information processed at a later level (KINTSCH; RAWSON, 2013). Understanding of a level is required for understanding of the subsequent level to occur. The levels are organized into textual units, ranging from the sentence to the whole text, including the paragraph. In the study of text comprehension, therefore, it is necessary to determine how information from one level is extracted, as well as how it is integrated to the next level, during the processing of textual units. Thus, The research question addressed here is how the paragraph arrangement, assumed here as a textual unit, affects the overall comprehension of the text (KINTSCH; VAN DIJK, 1978). On the other hand, individual differences also affect both text processing and comprehension, since readers are able to recognize the underlying structure of the text and the textual units, using them as a strategy for extracting information. Therefore, another research question is how different reader profiles deals with the way of the text and and its units are organized (KIERAS, 1978). The present work aimed to evaluate the role of paragraph structuring in reading comprehension, identify different reader profiles and how they deal with (good / bad) textual organization. By using a self-paced reading experiment, we sought to categorize the subjects in order to extract the different reader profiles. The results point to a decisive role of the textual structure in processing, being the ability to process this structure directly linked to the individual skills of the readers.