Readers' tellings: Narrators, settings, flashbacks and comprehension

This research explores the impact of flashbacks and changes in settings and narrators on reader comprehension. Individually, 34 fourth graders (9 and 10 years of age), mostly with above average reading abilities (5.0), orally read the first chapter of a novel. Both publisher and readability formulae estimated the text to be at a fourth‐ grade level. A content analysis of the text indicated no ideas that would have been new or difficult for the students to comprehend. However, across the five story episodes, there was a change in time, place and narrator in the beginning of each new episode. Following the oral reading, retellings were elicited from the students, followed by researcher probes. All readings and retellings were audiotaped. Oral readings were analysed using miscue analysis and retelling ideas were matched, when possible, with ideas in the text. An examination of the miscues indicated that the vast majority of miscues did not change the meanings intended by the author. That is, processing behaviours reflected an understanding of the text. However, there were considerable gaps within the retellings, whether measured on the clause, event or story grammar element level. The constant change in time, place and narrator appeared significantly to impact the reading comprehension abilities of the students. The use of retellings for instructional and future research purposes is recommended.