The Effects of Summarization and Factual Retrieval Practice on Text Comprehension and Text Retention in Elementary Education

When reading a text in school, the goal is both text comprehension and text retention. We examined the effects of the learning strategies summarization and factual retrieval practice on third- and fourth-grade pupils’ text comprehension and retention of factual knowledge from a text, using restudy as a control condition. The experiment was conducted in an authentic classroom setting, with teachers executing the experiment using original course materials. In 2016, 57 regular third- and fourth-grade pupils (M = 9.04 years old) read three different texts, and each applied three different learning strategies (summarization, retrieval practice and restudy, which were counterbalanced across texts) in subsequent practice sessions. After a 2-week delay, a final test was administered. The learning strategy summarization had a larger positive effect on text comprehension than factual retrieval practice, but had a similar effect compared to restudy. The learning strategy factual retrieval practice had a larger positive effect on text retention than both summarization and restudy. Implications for educational practice are discussed. We show that, compared to factual retrieval practice, summarization and restudy have a larger positive effect on third- and fourth-grade pupils' text comprehension in an authentic elementary classroom setting. The summarization effects were comparable to the more time-efficient learning strategy restudy, implying that for summarization to be beneficial at this age, a summary training is necessary to increase pupils' summary quality. We show that, compared to summarization and restudy, factual retrieval practice is the most beneficial learning strategy for the retention of factual knowledge from a text in third- and fourth-grade pupils and could therefore be implemented in elementary school curricula for this purpose.