Instructional Procedures for Increasing Skill‐Deficient Fourth Graders’ Comprehension of Syntactic Structures

Comprehension of pronoun‐referent structures has been shown to cause difficulty for children throughout the middle grades. This study investigated the effectiveness of a pronoun‐specific approach using principles of systematic instruction in teaching students to identify pronoun antecedents and to answer factual questions based on this knowledge. This approach was contrasted to both a retell method (where the students practised paraphrasing the text) and a no intervention condition. Forty‐five fourth grade students (identified by a screening test as skill deficient) were randomly assigned to one of these three treatment groups. Students in both the pronoun‐specific and the retell group received 20 minutes of individual instruction per day for three consecutive days. On the day following treatment, all three groups were given two tests, one assessing the identification of pronoun‐referent structures and one requiring the child to answer factual questions based on the comprehension of these structures. Maintenance tests were given two weeks later. All passages in the teaching sessions and the test materials were selected from social studies or science texts currently approved for school district use. Results of an analysis of variance with planned comparisons indicated a significant difference favouring the pronoun‐specific group on the identification of pronoun antecedents. These results were also replicated on the maintenance test. No significant differences were found on measures of factual comprehension.