Pre-Reading — Understand the Purpose of the Reading¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 10 studies (5 causal, 3 review, 2 quant-synthesis), q2–q3 · 3 of 10 report an effect size

Description¶

Before reading, learners are given or generate an explicit purpose: a question to answer, a task the text will support, or a use for the information (e.g., "read to decide which proposal to fund"). The purpose is established through a short orientation — a framing question, a scenario, or a stated application — so that reading becomes goal-directed rather than passive decoding.

Design Implications¶

Purpose-setting is a form of Activation: it primes relevant prior knowledge and gives learners a schema for selecting what matters Activation improves learning outcomes. [+M]. It also functions as a lightweight advance organizer, supplying structure before the text is encountered Advance organizers improve learning. [+M]. Because reading with a purpose narrows attention, it reduces extraneous processing on irrelevant detail Chunking reduces working memory load. [+M] and supports self-regulated comprehension monitoring Self-regulated learning.

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A purpose that is specific enough to guide attention ("identify the two causes of X") rather than generic ("read carefully")
• Alignment between the stated purpose and the post-reading task — a mismatch trains learners to ignore purposes
• Enough time for learners to restate the purpose in their own words before reading begins

Constraints¶

• Overly narrow purposes cause tunnel vision: learners retain goal-irrelevant content poorly, which is a problem when broad comprehension is the goal [~M]
• Purposes imposed without learner buy-in add compliance overhead rather than motivation; purpose works best when learners see the task as meaningful [~W]
• If the post-reading activity never uses the purpose, learners learn that pre-reading framing is decorative and skip it [-W]

Implementation Variability¶

• Instructor-provided purpose (fast, reliable) vs. learner-generated questions (slower, builds self-regulation)
• Scenario-based purposes ("you are the consultant…") vs. question-based purposes
• Written purpose statements, KWL-style charts, or a one-minute pair discussion

Target Learners¶

• Developing readers and novices in a discipline, who otherwise read everything with equal (usually insufficient) depth Disciplinary literacy instruction improves comprehension. [+M]
• Struggling readers, who benefit most from explicit attention direction because they cannot yet flexibly allocate effort
• Advanced readers may self-set purposes and find imposed ones constraining [~W]

Target Learning Goals¶

• Reading comprehension with selective retention of goal-relevant information
• Self-regulated learning: planning and monitoring as habitual pre-reading moves
• Disciplinary literacy: learning that experts read differently depending on purpose

Instructions¶

1. Present the post-reading task first, so the purpose is grounded in something learners must actually do (Application)
2. State or elicit a specific purpose question; have learners restate it in their own words (Activation)
3. Briefly activate relevant prior knowledge with a prediction or brainstorm (Activating Prior Knowledge)
4. Have learners read with the purpose visible (posted, on a bookmark, in margin notes via Annotating)
5. Debrief against the purpose: did the text answer it? What was left open?

Related Strategies¶

• Activating Prior Knowledge — the companion pre-reading move; purpose directs attention, activation supplies content to connect it to
• Advance Organizers — structural pre-reading frames that pair naturally with purpose statements
• KWL — a routinized format in which "What do I want to find out?" is the purpose step

Examples¶

• Reciprocal Teaching (Palincsar & Brown) — students set a purpose question before each passage segment, then summarize and clarify against it.
• Reading Apprenticeship — disciplinary routines that open with "What is my purpose for reading this?" as part of metacognitive conversation.
• Case-method pre-reading (Harvard Business School) — students receive discussion questions with a case so they read as decision-makers, not spectators.

Key Sources¶

• Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1(2), 117–175. doi:10.1207/s1532690xci0102_1
• Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51(5), 267–272. doi:10.1037/h0046669
• Alexander, P. A., & Jetton, T. L. (2000). Learning from text: A multidimensional and developmental perspective. In M. L. Kamil et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 3, pp. 285–310). Erlbaum.
• Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40–59. doi:10.17763/haer.78.1.v62444321p602101