Although researchers have previously called for such teaching and although many ESL classroom reading teachers may already incorporate such training into their lesson plans, for the first time we have tangible evidence that such training can yield a positive outcome. This quotation is significant because the author points out that the study's results serve as evidence that teaching text structure helps ESL students improve their reading comprehension skills of academic texts. Teachers can feel confident about teaching text structure because there is a study that shows that this is an effective pedagogical tool in teaching reading. Teachers can choose different types of texts to teach students their structure in order to develop reading skills that facilitate reading comprehension. Teachers can design exercises that help students identify strategies for decoding meaning from different types of texts.
Students can apply knowledge of different types of text structures in writing assignments.
A study in reading comprehension. This article reports the results of a study whose purpose was to investigate how readers process implicit and explicit definitions in scientific texts. The participants in the study were 67 ESL students and 36 American undergraduate students enrolled in English courses at Iowa State University. The students read texts with implicit and explicit definitions and responded to test instruments that evaluated comprehension. The authors concluded that implict definitions are more difficult to comprehend by both ESL students and American students.