Genre-based Analysis of English Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) and Examining the Reading Strategies Used by Skilled and Novice Readers in Reading PILs

Abstract

This study sought to identify the rhetorical structures of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs), and also explored the reading strategies utilized by skilled and novice readers in reading this kind of text. This study was conducted in two phases; the genre analysis phase aimed at identifying the macro- and micro-structure of PILs; the microstructure analysis was done at two levels of move and step. In this phase, 30 English PILs were analyzed. The second phase tried to explore reading strategies used by readers possessing different reading abilities. Think-aloud procedure was used to study the use of different reading strategies. The results of the first phase indicated that PILs are composed of 17 sections, and each section has its own particular move-step framework. The second phase showed that skilled readers used more reading strategies than the novice. The highest utilized category of strategies among both groups was word processing strategy. Moreover, the skilled group paid more attention to higher-level processing strategies than the novice group. In addition to this, they paid attention to word and sentence level meaning simultaneously.