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Research into discourse synthesis examines the ways in which writers make use of, and transform, multiple other texts in writing their own. It is intertextual research that has blurred boundaries of various kinds, not only the boundary between the processes of reading and writing but also boundaries across disciplines as well as regions of the world. Guided by a cognitive constructivist perspective, this research into discourse synthesis drew at its origin—and continues to draw now—from multidisciplinary theoretical and empirical work. This article, which establishes the foundations for this research and traces its development, attends to writers’ transformations of multiple source texts resulting from operations of organizing, selecting, and connecting. Studies into synthesis writing for varying academic tasks have shown that, by applying these operations to multiple textual sources, writers produce discourses that function as new texts in new contexts. Following a discussion of historical background, attention in this article goes to three major issues: the variation in synthesis associated with different academic genres; the kinds of insights into product and process that come from different research approaches; and the nature of new instructional approaches that emphasize elements of discourse synthesis. All facets of this research reveal continuity as well as change, the latter occurring, in large part, through contact and convergence of discourse synthesis research with related bodies of work. The conclusion, which centers on the notion of transformation, summarizes research conducted thus far and points to future directions.

Coh-Metrix analyzes texts on multiple measures of language and discourse that are aligned with multilevel theoretical frameworks of comprehension. Dozens of measures funnel into five major factors that systematically vary as a function of types of texts (e.g., narrative vs. informational) and grade level: narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, and deep (causal) cohesion. Texts are automatically scaled on these five factors with Coh-Metrix-TEA (Text Easability Assessor). This article reviews how these five factors account for text variations and reports analyses that augment Coh-Metrix in two ways. First, there is a composite measure calledformality, which increases with low narrativity, syntactic complexity, word abstractness, and high cohesion. Second, the words are analyzed with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, an automated system that measures words in texts on dozens of psychological attributes. One next step in automated text analyses is a topics analysis that scales the difficulty of conceptual topics.

This study investigates the relationship between three discourse synthesis skills (i.e., quotation, summarization, and connection) and students’ overall integrated writing performance in Chinese, students’ first language, and English, their second language. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that 63.6% of the variance in students’ overall Chinese integrated writing performance was accounted for by the three discourse synthesis skills, with connection and summarization contributed almost equally to the overall scores. In the English test, the three skills explained 47.9% of the variance. Cross-linguistic facilitation of the L1 discourse synthesis skills to the overall L2 integrated writing performance was observed, although the predictive strength of the three skills was comparatively low. Eye-tracking data together with subsequent stimulated-recall interviews illuminated the differences in students’ approaches to discourse synthesis. Findings of the study support the decisive role of discourse synthesis abilities in both L1 and L2 integrated writing assessments. Implications for writing instruction are discussed.

The benefits of retrieval practice (practice testing) are pervasive across various materials, learning conditions, and criterial tasks, and consequently researchers and educators have enthusiastically recommended retrieval practice for educational applications. Less research has been devoted to examining the effect of combining retrieval practice with other evidence-based learning strategies; this article focuses on an emerging literature that examines the outcomes of combining potent elaborative encoding methods with retrieval practice. Theoretically, several possibilities can be identified. Augmenting retrieval practice with effective encoding strategies could significantly improve learning relative to retrieval practice alone through complementary mechanisms of each or through effective encoding catalyzing retrieval practice effects. Alternatively, effective encoding combined with retrieval practice might not improve learning (relative to retrieval practice alone), because the processing produced by elaborative encoding strategies is overly redundant with those promoted by retrieval practice. The extant literature, which has focused on everyday learning tasks (e.g., name learning) and educationally relevant tasks ranging from learning of arbitrary associations (e.g., new vocabulary meanings) to learning from connected discourse, is reviewed, and helps inform these possibilities. The findings largely converge on the conclusion that incorporating elaborative encoding techniques with retrieval practice prior to, but not concurrent with, retrieval practice provides a boost for learning and retention.

The study developed a model of linguistic constructs to predict writing quality for college basic writers and analyzed how those constructs changed following instruction. Analysis used a corpus of argumentative essays from a quasi-experimental, instructional study with 252 students (MacArthur, Philippakos, & Ianetta, 2015) that found large effects (ES = 1.22) on quality of argumentative writing. Coh-Metrix (McNamara, Graesser, McCarthy, & Cai, 2014) was used to analyze the essays for lexical and syntactic complexity and cohesion. Structural equation modeling found that referential cohesion (p < .001) and lexical complexity (p < .01) positively predicted quality on posttest essays while syntactic complexity (p < .001) was negatively related to quality. Length explained 30% of variance in quality; the full model explained 48.7%. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to impute factor scores for pretest and posttest essays. Analysis of covariance using these factors found that the treatment group wrote posttest essays with greater lexical complexity (p < .01) and referential cohesion (p < .01) and less use of connectives (p < .05) than a business-as-usual control group.

In the current study, we examined relations between text features (e.g., word concreteness, referential cohesion) and reading comprehension using multilevel logistic models. The sample was 158 native English-speaking students between 8 years, 8 months and 11 years, 2 months of age with a wide range of reading ability. In line with the simple view of reading, decoding ability and language comprehension were associated with reading comprehension performance. Text characteristics, including indices of word frequency, number of pronouns, word concreteness, and deep cohesion, also predicted unique variance in reading comprehension performance over and above the simple view’s components. Additionally, the emotional charge of text (i.e., lexical ratings of arousal) predicted reading comprehension beyond traditional person-level and text-based characteristics. These findings add to a small but growing body of evidence suggesting that it is important to consider emotional charge in addition to person-level and text-based characteristics to better understand reading comprehension performance.

On a daily basis, most people read about issues of interest from a diversity of sources. Moreover, the information they encounter frequently encompass discrepancies, ranging from minor inconsistencies to straight contradictions. Readers may construct coherent representations from discrepant contents by linking contents to their respective sources and connecting the sources with agree-disagree or other types of connectives. Across research studies, however, college-level readers' attention to sources has been found to vary according to individual, text and task dimensions. The present study tested the assumption that readers' strategies depend both on the discrepancy of the information and on the context in which the task is framed. Moreover, beliefs about science were included as potential moderator of context effects. One hundred and sixty university students were tasked to read about a series of social-scientific issues. The task was framed in either a university context or a personal context scenario. For each topic, the participants read two short texts which provided either consistent or discrepant information, and then they wrote a short overview essay. The university context had a significant impact on indicators related to a documents model representation (e.g., text switches, number of adversative connectors in the essay) and standards for presentation (e.g., time on the essay/task page, formal features of the essay). The data support a context-dependent view of reading comprehension, whereby both reading behavior and outcomes are primarily a function of the standards and goals set by the reader.

Purpose: This study aimed to obtain a comprehensive understanding about how Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) performed speech prosody in a connected discourse and to what extent their prosodic scenario differed from those normal-hearing (NH) peers. Method: Fifteen prelingually deaf Mandarin-speaking children with unilateral multichannel CIs were chosen and 15 age-matched NH controls were recruited. Speech samples were spontaneously elicited by children's rhyme speech genre and subject to phonetic annotation. Acoustic analysis was conducted on all speech samples, mainly focusing on the measurements of duration and fundamental frequency (F0). Tempo measures included temporal fluency, syllable-lengthening, and rhythm metrics, whereas melodic measures included both local and global F0 variations under different prosodic domains. Results: The CI children generally achieved compatible temporal performance with the NH children in spontaneous discourse, except that they were somewhat arbitrary when operationalizing lengthening strategy and pausing strategy at different prosodic boundaries. With regard to melodic performance, CI children may not sufficiently modulate local phonetic nuances of F0 variation, and meanwhile, they performed atypically in the global F0 declination pattern and overall F0 resetting pattern, failing to signal the specific structure of children's rhyme discourse. Early age at implantation and longer CI experience did not play a significant role in the temporal performance of the CI children but did facilitate their articulation of dynamic pitch variation in the spontaneous discourse to some extent. Conclusion: CI children did exhibit atypical prosodic patterns in discourse context, especially the overall mapping between the prosodic manifestation and the discourse structure.

As Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) gains a broader usage, the need for automated tools capable of supporting tutors in the time-consuming process of analyzing conversations becomes more pressing. Moreover, collaboration, which presumes the intertwining of ideas or points of view among participants, is a central element of dialogue performed in CSCL environments. Therefore, starting from dialogism and a cohesion-based model of discourse, we propose and validate two computational models for assessing collaboration. The first model is based on a cohesion graph and can be perceived as a longitudinal analysis of the ongoing conversation, thus accounting for collaboration from a social knowledge-building perspective. In the second approach, collaboration is regarded from a dialogical perspective as the intertwining or synergy of voices pertaining to different speakers, therefore enabling a transversal analysis of subsequent discussion slices.

Background Anomia treatments typically focus on single word retrieval, although the ultimate goal of treatment is to improve functional communication at the level of discourse in daily situations. Aims The focus of this study was to investigate the impact of two effective anomia treatments on discourse production as measured by a story retell task. Method and Procedure Fifty-seven people with aphasia were randomized to receive either a phoneme-based treatment, Phonomotor Therapy (PMT; 28 participants), or a lexical-semantic treatment, Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA; 29 participants). Groups were matched for age, aphasia severity, education, and years post onset. All received 56-60 hr of treatment in a massed treatment schedule. Therapy was delivered for a total of 8-10 hr/week over the course of 6-7 weeks. All participants completed testing 1 week prior to treatment (A1), immediately following treatment (A2), and again 3 months later (A3). Discourse was analyzed through the percentage of correct information units at each time point. Outcomes and Results Both groups showed nonsignificant improvements from pretreatment to immediately posttreatment. The PMT group showed significant improvement 3 months posttreatment, while the SFA group returned to near-baseline levels. Conclusion These results add to our understanding of the effects of both PMT and SFA. Future research should address understanding variability in discourse outcomes across studies and the effects of aphasia severity and individual participant and treatment factors on treatment outcomes for both of these approaches.