As a teacher, I can say with confidence that a narrative text (i.e., fiction) is easier to comprehend and remember than expository text (i.e., factual and informational material) for most young students. Children have a natural curiosity and interest in ‘story’.  Students require some background knowledge when reading non-fiction.  Unfortunately, most students lack the appropriate background knowledge.

Most research on narrative text has focused on teaching students to use story structure as an organizing framework for comprehending important characteristics of the stories they read. Even preschool children use story structure to help with their comprehension. As they get older, children improve in their ability to use it. However, some students are slower to develop this ability. They may not be good at specific reading skills, such as picking out important story information, making inferences, and identifying the main idea. 

Several studies have addressed the question of how to improve the ability of students to use narrative structure. For example, Idol-Maestas (1985), developed a strategy that consisted of the following steps: (T): study story titles, (E): examine and skim pages for clues, (L, L): look for important and difficult words, and (S): think about the story settings. Using this strategy, called TELLS, students improved their performance on comprehension questions and raised their scores on a standardized reading test.

The most current reading strategies in our school systems today are proving to be effective. Students require reading strategies such as inferring, questioning, and comparing and contrasting when reading fiction.  These strategies, in combination with language and content-rich books, will help students improve their reading comprehension and maximize their understanding of narrative text.