The contribution of sourcing skills on intertextual integration skills in middle school students’ reading of multiple texts

Many studies have found that evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of document sources is an important skill in learning multiple texts. However, few research have investigated how paying attention to source information helps readers learn to appropriately integrate read texts. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which sourcing skills predict intertextual integration skills in reading multimedia texts. A total of 181 adolescents attending middle school participated in the research (M-age [SD]= 11.95 [1.05]). Participants completed following tasks: Source Knowledge Inventory, Sentence Verification and Prior Knowledge. Correlational analyses indicated significant interactions between source identification skills and integration skills. Hierarchical regression analyses show that sourcing skills and prior knowledge are two independent predictors of intertextual integration skills. The final adjusted model is significant and explained 20 % of variance in integration skills. These results suggest that high sourcing performances and high prior knowledge imply higher multimedia text integration skills. From an educational perspective, improving sourcing skills could benefit students’ abilities to use the best intertextual integration strategies.