The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of teaching text structure as a tool to assist first grade students' understanding of science content in a unit of study on plants. A quantitative analysis was performed to reveal any difference in mean post-test scores between a control group and a treatment group. Results indicated that the treatment group students' science content knowledge was increased significantly more than students in the control group. Usage of specific text structure keywords did not increase. However, students did use synonyms of keywords. Recommendations for further research are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching reading through discussion of text structures on students' reading comprehension. The design of the study was a Pretest-Posttest Control-Group Design. One hundred twenty-six sophomore and senior Thai college students majoring in English and attending afternoon English classes participated in the 10-week study and were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group received reading instruction in the characteristics of narrative and expository text structures and how to discuss the details of story by applying knowledge of text structures. The control group, on the other hand, read each story silently by themselves and answered comprehension questions. The posttest means of the two groups were compared, and a t test was used to test the significance difference of the means. The results did not reveal any differences between the means. The short time of the intervention may be a crucial factor that made the two strategies yield the same effects. However, the survey responses showed the participants liked reading through discussion of text structures more than reading by themselves.