An experimental study in a 2 x 3 x 3 design was conducted to determine the effects of instructional set (motivating vs non-motivating), syntactic-constraint (random words, random phrases and intact sentences) and theme imposition (no theme, subject's theme and provided theme) on recall of prose. Syntactic constraint and theme imposition were found to exert differential effect on recall, instructional set was found to be non-significant. No significant interaction effects were found. The obtained results are interpreted in the framework of theoretical ideas advanced by Bartlett (1932) as well as Dooling and Lachman (1971).