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PORPE: A research validation

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PORPE: A Research Validation
Author(s): Michele L. Simpson, Norman A. Stahl and Christopher G. Hayes
Source: Journal of Reading, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Oct., 1989), pp. 22-28
Published by: International Reading Association
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 Simpson and Hayes teach in the Division of Develop-
mental Studies at the University of Georgia (Clark
Howell Hall, Athens GA 30602, USA). Stahl teaches
reading at Northern Illinois Universityin DeKalb.

PORPE: A research Michele L. Simpson

Norman A. Stahl
validation
Christopher G. Hayes

Content teachers can no longer rely on evidence

that merely suggests that integrative reading strate-
gies will help their students understand subject mat-
ter; rather, what is needed is evidence that definitely
proves that these strategies will increase student
learning.
Patberg made that statement in the Journal of Read-
ing a decade ago (1979, p. 333). Although other read-
ing professionals have concurred, the amount of
research designed to validate the effectiveness of var-
ious reading strategies in actual classrooms has not
increased significantly. In fact, Swafford and Alver-
mann (1987) found that only 50% of the comprehen-
sion or vocabulary strategies covered in six current
content area reading methods textbooks were based
upon any type of research foundation. Similarly,
Langer (1986) and Newell (1984) have commented on
the need for more empirical studies on writing as a
means of learning content area concepts.
These indictments influenced us in our decision to
validate PORPE, an integrated study strategy system
which first appeared in this journal (Simpson, 1986).
The purpose of this article is to share with secondary
and postsecondary teachers our results from two
studies on whether PORPE could increase college
students' learning in an actual classroom setting.
Both show that PORPE does have important advan-
tages for longterm learning and student indepen-
dence.

Background on PORPE
When students employ the steps of PORPE as they
read and study, they behave like Baker and Brown's
(1984) "effective readers" who encode information
and regulate their own learning.
The first three steps of PORPE- Predict, Organize,
and Rehearse- involve students in the encoding
processes of selection, acquisition, construction, and
integration. Then the last two steps, Practice and
Evaluate, involve them in the metacognitive proc-
esses that regulate and oversee the learning process.
Each of these five steps is based on the research
and theory that describe essential characteristics of

22 Journal of Reading October 1989

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independent learning. The specific theoretical con-
structs and research basis for each step of PORPE
are summarized in the Figure.
The five steps of PORPE are synergistic in that they
build upon each other and guide students through the
processes necessary to read, study, and learn content
area material. With the first step, Predict, students
generate higher level essay questions that cover the
content to be mastered and call for organized essay
responses. In this critical step, students clarify the
purposes of their subsequent study.
This Predict step is somewhat akin to the planning
aspect of writing and reading tasks described by
Tierney and Pearson (1983) in that the learner is in-
volved in setting purposes, focusing, and self-ques-
tioning. By posing several general or higher order
essay questions that require either a synthesis and
discussion, a comparison and contrast, or an evalua-
tion of the chapter's key concepts, students are led to
process the text in a more active or elaborative man-
ner as they read and study (Reder, 1980).
The second step, Organize, involves students in
constructing the information that will answer the self-
predicted essay questions. In constructing, the
learner builds "internal connections" among ideas so
that information becomes reorganized into a coherent
structure (Cook & Mayer, 1983). For each predicted
essay question, students map or outline answers in
their own words.
This second step of PORPE is also very similar to
the drafting stage of writing and reading tasks de-
scribed by Tierney and Pearson (1983) in that stu-
dents are beginning to plan and organize information
for subsequent writing.
The third step of PORPE, Rehearse, engages stu-
dents in the active recitation and self-testing of the key
ideas recorded in their maps or outlines. In a sense,
students are verbally answering their predicted essay
questions so that the key ideas can become trans-
ferred to working memory.
With the fourth step, Practice, students must vali-
date their learning in some public and observable
form. That validation comes by students writing from
recall the answers to their self-predicted essay ques-
tions. This use of writing leads students from passive
and literal-minded responses to higher levels of think-
ing and reasoning such as analysis and synthesis
(Langer, 1986).
The final step, Evaluate, requires students to use
their writing to validate whether they have created a
meaningful text that demonstrates their understand-
ing of the content and to evaluate their text as another
reader such as the course instructor might. To facili-
tate this process of monitoring and evaluating, stu-
dents are given a checklist that guides them in
determining the completeness, accuracy, and appro-
priateness of their written product in terms of the origi-
nal task, the self-predicted essay question.
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Does PORPE improve learning?
We wanted to answer several questions in our re-
search. Most importantly, we noticed informally how
PORPE had improved our college students' abilities
to write effective and accurate answers on essay ex-
aminations. Hence, we wanted to test this comprehen-
sive strategy in a controlled yet ecologically valid
situation.
While we were, of course, interested in the more tra-
ditional quantitative aspects of test performance, we
were also concerned about the organization and co-
hesion of the students' essay answers. These qualita-
tive features are often overlooked in a research study,
yet they can indicate higher levels of thinking and rea-
soning (Stotsky, 1983).
Second, informal feedback from students who had
mastered PORPE led us to believe that this strategy
also prepared them for multiple choice and true-false
examinations. We were intrigued with their testimoni-
als since findings from research studies in which stu-
dents had been trained to use other writing processes
(e.g., summarization or the analytical essay) had not
demonstrated a superior performance on objective ex-
ams (King, Biggs, & Lipsky, 1984; Newell, 1984).
Finally, we wanted to test the durability of PORPE
since most studies have not investigated how much
students can recall and recognize over time when
they use writing as a means of learning.
Specifically, these were the questions we wanted to
answer:
(1) Will students employing PORPE have a superior
performance on the immediate and delayed multiple
choice exam?
(2) Will students employing PORPE have a superior
performance on the immediate and delayed essay
exam, scored dichotomously or as a content area in-
structor would score it?
(3) Will the essays (immediate and delayed) of the
students employing PORPE reveal superiority in a ho-
listic assessment of content, organization, and cohe-
sion?
To answer these questions, we conducted two dif-
ferent studies with college freshmen enrolled in a
state mandated developmental studies program.
Study 1 was designed to initiallyvalidate PORPE.
Study 1
The subjects participating in Study 1 were 65 specially
admitted students enrolled in a developmental (not re-
medial) studies learning strategy course. Two classes
were randomly selected to receive the PORPE treat-
ment and two were randomly selected to receive the
control treatment. No significant differences were
found in the SAT-Verbalscores across the four learn-
ing strategies classes, F(3,64) = 1.62, p < .195. A
prior knowledge, passage specific test (Langer, 1980)
further substantiated that the four intact groups were
PORPE: A research validation 23
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24 Journal of Reading October 1989

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similar and that there were no significant differences
in the students' prior knowledge about the topic in the
third chapter excerpt, F(3,64) = .2745, p < .8435.
During a 3 week period, the study's instructional se-
quence involved five different phases which were re-
peated each week. All the instruction, assignments,
and tests were integrated into the normal classroom
routine. The first author taught all four classes.
In phase 1 the students in the experimental and
control groups were assigned to read one psychology
chapter excerpt for each week. All three excerpts were
written on the college level and were between 1 ,658
and 3,844 words long.
During phase 2, training, the first author taught the
students how to use either PORPE, the experimental
treatment, or a traditional question-answer format, the
control treatment, to study the excerpt assigned for
that week. During the experimental treatment, the stu-
dents were guided through the five steps of PORPE.
During the control treatment, the students answered
in their own words questions prepared by the re-
searcher, a procedure familiar to most content area
teachers who use the questions appearing at the end
of the chapter.
The researcher's questions on the study sheet
asked students to define, give characteristics, exem-
plify, explain, perceive the superstructure of the text,
and to apply information to new contexts. These ques-
tions were written on the left side of the study sheet
and students wrote their answers on the righthand
side. This provided them a self-testing format for
studying the content.
Phase 3, independent study, occurred each week
after the 2 days of training. The students were given 2
more days to independently study their self-developed
training materials (the chapter excerpt was taken from
them) in preparation for their exam.
On the fourth day of each week, the students took
an essay and multiple choice exam over the assigned
chapter excerpt. This was phase 4, testing. All three
exams were averaged into the students' grades, but
only the exam on the last chapter excerpt was in-
cluded in the data analyses.
This last exam, with a reliability coefficient of .79,
contained 20 multiple choice questions (60% memory
level, 40% higher level, either interpretive or applica-
tive) and 2 essay questions, each worth 10 points,
making a total of 40 points.
A delayed and unannounced testing, phase 5, oc-
curred exactly 2 weeks later for the last chapter ex-
cerpt.
Scoring
The multiple choice exam was scored with a key, and
the two essays were scored by two trained raters who
were unaware of either the treatment condition or the
testing period for any of the essays.
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The first essay scoring procedure (dichotomous
scoring) corresponded to the subject oriented proce-
dure that a content area teacher generally employs
when grading essay exams. The interrater reliability
was .89.
The second scoring was a holistic assessment
(Cooper, 1977) of three features for each essay: con-
tent, organization/coherence, and cohesion. Interrater
reliabilities for the feature subscores were acceptable
(Diederich, 1974): .97 for content, .85 for organization,
and .83 for cohesion.
The method of analysis was a factorial design using
the SAT-Vas a covariate variable. We found the follow-
ing:
(1) The students trained in PORPE scored signifi-
cantly higher than the question-answer group on the
immediate multiple choice exam, F(1, 60 = 13.69,
p = .001, and also on the delayed multiple choice
exam, F(1,60) = 1 1 .49, p = .001 .
(2) When the essays were dichotomously scored,
the students trained in PORPE scored significantly
higher than the question-answer group on the immedi-
ate essay exam, F(1,60) = 167.82, p = .0001 , and also
on the delayed essay exam, F(1 ,60) = 19.8117,
p = .0001.
(3) When the essays were holisticallyscored, the stu-
dents trained in PORPE had essay responses signifi-
cantly superior to the question-answer group in content,
organization, and cohesion. Specifically, the subscore
results for the PORPE group's essays written in the im-
mediate testing were: Content, F(1,60 = 131.34,
p = .00001; Organization, F(1,60) = 92.08, p = .0001; and
Cohesion, F(1,60) = 45.64, p = .0001 .
For the delayed testing the subscore results for the
PORPE group were: Content, F(1, 60) = 14.76,
p = .0003; Organization, F(1,60) = 10.31 , p = .002; and
Cohesion, F(1,60) = 9.61 , p = .0029.
The results of this initial study support the conten-
tion that PORPE can be a powerful and durable strat-
egy in facilitating student learning.
While we were not surprised to discover that stu-
dents who predicted and practiced writing their own
essays would produce superior essays during the
exam, we were surprised that their multiple choice
scores were also superior to those of the question-
answer group. Considering that the question-answer
group directly practiced all of the key concepts in the
instructor's study questions, this finding becomes
even more encouraging. It suggests that the PORPE
procedure benefited these developmental college stu-
dents to the point that the concepts were incorporated
into their long term memory to a greater degree than
for their peers in the question-answer group.
One plausible explanation for the potency of
PORPE upon the immediate and delayed multiple
choice exams may be that the learner oriented essays
that the students produced during the five steps of
PORPE may have required more elaborative process-
PORPE: A research validation 25
ing and thus more depth of processing (Anderson &
Reder, 1979; Bradshaw & Anderson, 1982).
Equally important was the finding that the essays of
the students trained in PORPE were better organized
and more cohesive, two qualitative measures that can
mirrora student's thinking. While assigning students
to answer teacher prepared questions may initiallyap-
pear to be productive in terms of time and student/
teacher effort, writing tasks like those organized in
PORPE seem to stimulate the kind of synthesizing,
analyzing, and active thinking that all content area
teachers strive to attain and generally yearn for, but
only occasionally achieve.
Study 2
We conducted a second study in order to compare
PORPE with another nonwriting strategy more equiva-
lent in the cognitive and metacognitive processes es-
sential to independent learning. More specifically, we
wanted to determine if the encouraging results from
Study 1 could be replicated when the control group
used a strategy requiring them to be equally involved
in their own learning. Hence, we devised a five step
comprehensive package entitled POARE as the con-
trol treatment.
With POARE, students were asked to Predict possi-
ble short answer questions, Organize the questions
on the left side of a piece of paper, write the Answers
to the questions in their own words on the right side of
the paper, Rehearse the answers to the questions
without looking, and then to Evaluate their readiness
for the exam by determining how many questions they
could answer accurately and readily. Although some
writing was involved in POARE, it was only at the sen-
tence level.
The students came from the same pool of subjects
as in Study 1 , with 48 college freshmen from four in-
tact classes. Two groups were randomly assigned to
the PORPE treatment and two to the POARE treat-
ment. As with Study 1 , there were no significant differ-
ences across the four groups, F(2,46) = 1 .14, p = .1 60.
The chapter excerpts, training sequence, exams,
and scoring procedures were the same as for Study 1 .
Again, both treatments were incorporated into the nor-
mal instructional routine in order to maintain the integ-
rityof the classroom.
Once again we found some intriguing results. Most
importantly,the PORPE students did not perform sig-
nificantly better than the POARE students on the im-
mediate multiple choice exam, F(2,46) = 2.22,
p = .143. However, the durability of the PORPE treat-
ment again prevailed on the delayed multiple choice
exam at a level of significance similar to Study 1
F(2,46) = 12.98, p = .001.
As with Study 1 , the essays of the PORPE group,
when scored dichotomously, were significantly better
in the immediate and delayed testing conditions,
26 Journal of Reading October 1989
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F(2,46) = 27.55, p = .0001 and F(2,46) = 26.60,
p = .0001, respectively. The holistic scoring again re-
vealed that the students trained in PORPE produced
essays with superior content, organization, and cohe-
sion for both immediate and delayed testing,
F(2,46) = 9. 10, p = .004 and F(2,46) = 17.06, p = .0001 .
We would be amiss if we did not point out that the
overall means for Study 2 were not as robust as those
in Study 1 . The PORPE trained students in Study 2
scored an average of about 1 point lower on the de-
layed multiple choice exam and 5 points lower on the
immediate essays scored dichotomously. Moreover,
the holistic subscores for the PORPE essays written
in the immediate testing condition were 2 to 3 points
lower than the scores in Study 1.
As classroom teachers we asked ourselves why the
PORPE trained students scored significantly better on
the delayed multiple choice exam but not on the im-
mediate multiple choice exam. One possible explana-
tion may be that the POARE students' initial
advantage on the immediate exam could not be sus-
tained over time. Predicting and answering questions
is a microlevel, serial task that does not promote stu-
dents' synthesis and integration of information across
sentences and paragraphs (Langer, 1986).
On the other hand, the synergistic steps of PORPE
may have provided students the generative tasks nec-
essary to commit the concepts to their longterm mem-
ory. As Wittrock (1983) has pointed out in numerous
research studies, students' longterm comprehension
will improve when they are required to generate rela-
tionships among concepts in the text or between the
text and their own background knowledge and experi-
ence.
Implications for classroom teachers
The results of these two studies suggest that PORPE
has these advantages:
(1) PORPE can stimulate students to synthesize,
analyze, and think about key concepts. Students' es-
says revealed these higher levels of thinking in the ho-
listic scorings.
(2) PORPE can help students remember concepts
over time, whether their learning is measured in a rec-
ognition or recall/production format. In both studies,
the students who used PORPE remembered signifi-
cantly more concepts.
(3) PORPE is a learning strategy that can be totally
teacher directed or totally student initiated. In this
study there was a gradual phasing out of teacher con-
trol and phasing in of student control.
(4) PORPE is a learning strategy that can help high
risk students increase their cognitive and metacogni-
tive processing. While the students in these two stud-
ies were not remedial, they did have extreme
difficulties studying long pieces of expository text.
(5) PORPE is a learning strategy that focuses upon
student oriented writing tasks and processes. Hence,
junior high and high school content area teachers who
are participating in writing across the curriculum pro-
grams could incorporate PORPE into their instruc-
tional routine without jeopardizing the time reserved
for teaching content area concepts.
(6) PORPE operationalizes and makes explicit the
steps necessary for essay exam preparation. Most
commercial materials offer students suggestions on
how to write an essay during the exam or how to inter-
pret the words that instructors use in an essay ques-
tion but ignore the actual steps students should go
through to prepare for the exam.
PORPE appears to have many advantages for
teachers interested in improving their students' com-
prehension, writing, and independent learning strate-
gies. For content area teachers contemplating the use
of PORPE, we would like to share some teaching sug-
gestions we collected and refined during the two re-
search studies.
Practical teaching suggestions
To be effective, any strategy training must occur over
time across many different content areas (Weinstein &
Mayer, 1986). Teachers must also be willing to provide
intensive instruction characterized by talk throughs,
guided practice, independent homework assign-
ments, and specific written and oral feedback, all us-
ing real selections from the students' textbooks.
Examples of maps or essays are also important, as
are numerous opportunities for students to work coop-
eratively in pairs or small groups.
Even though these general suggestions can usually
ensure a class's mastery of a comprehensive learning
strategy such as PORPE, there are some specific ar-
eas where students seem to have difficulty. Many sec-
ondary and postsecondary students have initial
difficulty predicting essay questions. Either they pre-
dict microlevel questions that could be answered in
one or two sentences or they claim they are incapable
of knowing what is important and thus testable.
To help those students who concentrate on specific
details instead of "big picture" questions, we found it
useful to teach the language of essay examinations.
For this we have distributed and discussed a glossary
of common essay question words, such as explain,
criticize, discuss, compare, and contrast.
Once students understand the meaning of the com-
mon words of the essay question, teachers can
present examples that compare microlevel and
macrolevel questions over the same content. For ex-
ample, when teaching a chapter on public opinion,
these two questions could be used as comparison:
"What does stability mean?" [detail or microlevel
question] vs. "Discuss the five characteristics of pub-
lic opinion" [macrolevel question].
To help those students who claim that they "don't
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know where to start" when predicting an essay ques-
tion, teachers could discuss with them where to find
clues to important ideas:
(1) Look at the textbook's table of contents for key
ideas.
(2) Survey your chapter for the boldface headings.
These can often be turned into excellent essay ques-
tions since they reflect what the author considered im-
portant.
(3) Read the chapter summary. It repeats key ideas
in a very general manner.
(4) Check the textbook's questions (they may or
may not be helpful) and your instructor's study guides
to see if they emphasize key ideas.
(5) Compare what was discussed in class with what
was covered in the textbook. Any common areas are
probably important and worthy of essay questions.
(6) Review what you have read and heard. Then ask
yourself: What have I found to be intriguing and wor-
thy of an essay? Could I write about this idea for sev-
eral paragraphs?
The Practice or writing step of PORPE also can be
troublesome for students initially. A few students will
profess that they really "know" the ideas that answer
their predicted essay question and thus do not need to
"waste time writing."
Because these reluctant writers are usually those
whose metacognitive abilities are not yet fully devel-
oped, they frequently deceive themselves about their
level of understanding and remembering. We have
successfully used the following scenario to convince
students of the power of committing ideas to paper:
Imagine that you have decided to run a grueling 20-mile race that
has US$5,000 in prizes. Would you train for it by running or by
walking? Of course, you would train by running- only a fool
would consider her/himself ready for a long run with practice ses-
sions of walking. Because running and walking are not equivalent
in what they demand, you wisely select to train in the way you will
have to perform on race day. Why then would you consider your-
self ready for an essay test when you have not written any prac-
tice answers? Thinking you are ready is not equivalent to
knowing that you are ready. How do you know that you are ready?
By running those 20 miles in a practice session or by writing be-
fore the exam.
Other students will be so filled with writing and test
anxiety that they sit immobilized with pen in hand wait-
ing for inspiration. These students profit from inten-
sive practice.
In addition, we have found the following ideas prac-
tical and beneficial for anxious students:
(1) Discuss the characteristics of good essays so
students will understand the "unknown." Distribute
copies of the PORPE checklist (Simpson, 1986). Stu-
dents often equate length with quality and forget that
relevancy and accuracy mean considerably more to
instructors.
(2) Share sample essay questions and their respec-
tive answers, and ask students to rank the papers or
to assign grades to them. One of the sample essays
PORPE: A research validation 27
 should be inadequate (i.e., did not answer the ques-
tion, used irrelevant information), and one should be
subtly superior.
(3) Starting is the most difficult aspect for many stu-
dents. Initiate the process by placing the first two sen-
tences of an essay on an overhead or board. Have the
students finish that essay within the next 20 minutes.
While the students are writing, move about the room
to discover some exemplary essays that could be sub-
sequently shared with the class.
(4) For students still having difficulty, talk through
the processes and decisions you make as you write an
essay on the overhead or board.
Conclusions
The results of these two research studies indicate that
PORPE is a practical, durable strategy for learning
content area concepts. Obviously, additional research
is needed with different content areas and age
groups. To be most effective, this extension and re-
finement of research should be a collaborative effort
between reading specialists and content area instruc-
tors.
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§
North American Conference on Adult
and Adolescent Literacy
This conference for practitionersand policymakers will take place January12-14, 1990, in the Washington
Hilton Hotel in Washington DC. Itspurpose is to share the best practices in adult and adolescent literacyand
to bring together various constituencies to enhance energies and efforts to promote literacy among adults
and adolescents at risk. Scheduled are panels, workshops, symposia, and presentations. There will be hands-
on computer labs and exhibits.
Registrationand housing information is available from Conferences Division, InternationalReading Associa-
tion, 800 BarksdaleRoad, Box 8139, Newark DE 19714-8139, USA.

28 Journal of Reading October 1989

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