Cross-sectional Study of the Contribution of Rhetorical Competence to Children’s Expository Texts Comprehension between Third- and Sixth-Grade

[EN]Readers' rhetorical competence is related to reading comprehension and moderates the impact of rhetorical devices in expository texts since upper elementary school years. In this cross-sectional study, we examine the differences in four measures of rhetorical competence (knowledge of anapho...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: García Pérez, José Ricardo, Sánchez Miguel, Emilio, Cain, Kate, Montoya, Juan Manuel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Salamanca (USAL)
Repositorio:GREDOS. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Salamanca
OAI Identifier:oai:gredos.usal.es:10366/155191
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10366/155191
Access Level:acceso embargado
Palabra clave:Cross-sectional study
Expository texts
Reading comprehension
Rhetorical competence
Rhetorical devices
Descripción
Sumario:[EN]Readers' rhetorical competence is related to reading comprehension and moderates the impact of rhetorical devices in expository texts since upper elementary school years. In this cross-sectional study, we examine the differences in four measures of rhetorical competence (knowledge of anaphors, organizational signals, refutations, and a total score) in grades three through to six, we determine its contribution to expository text comprehension after controlling the effect of a wide set of linguistic and cognitive variables, and we study whether this contribution is moderated by grade or any of our control variables. First, although we found evidence for some level of rhetorical competence at early ages, data suggest that rhetorical competence development takes many years. Second, we found that knowledge of some rhetorical devices is acquired before knowledge of others. Finally, rhetorical competence was a unique predictor of expository text comprehension, and its influence was evident regardless of grade and all of the control variables.