Abstract
The ability of children in sixth and eighth grade to get the gist of an expository text was examined, using the text with explicit topic sentences. Subjects were divided into two groups, a foretold group and a control group. In the foretold group they were foretold to summary before reading the text. The result showed that foretelling had eighth graders get the information not only from the beginning part but also from the middle part and the ending part. However, it did not have any effect on getting the gist correctly. Eighth graders got the gist more correctly than sixth graders as well as a better grasping of the relation among information. This was regarded as the result of their available knowledge of the form of topic sentences and of the format of expository texts.
