Materials Matter: An Exploration of Text Complexity and Its Effects on Middle School Readers' Comprehension Processing

Purpose: Complex features of science texts present idiosyncratic challenges for middle grade readers, especially in a post-Common Core educational world where students' learning is dependent on understanding informational text. The primary aim of this study was to explore how middle school readers process science texts and whether such comprehension processes differed due to features of complexity in two science texts. Method: Thirty 7th grade students read two science texts with different profiles of text complexity in a think-aloud task. Think-aloud protocols were coded for six comprehension processes: connecting inferences, elaborative inferences, evaluative comments, metacognitive comments, and associations. We analyzed the quantity and type of comprehension processes generated across both texts in order to explore how features of text complexity contributed to the comprehension processes students produced while reading. Results: Students made significantly more elaborative and connecting inferences when reading a text with deep cohesion, simple syntax, and concrete words, while students made more evaluative comments, paraphrases, and metacognitive comments when reading a text with referential cohesion, complex syntax, and abstract words. Conclusions: The current study provides exploratory evidence for features of text complexity affecting the type of comprehension processes middle school readers generate while reading science texts. Accordingly, science classroom texts and materials can be evaluated for word, sentence, and passage features of text complexity in order to encourage deep level comprehension of middle school readers.