Van Silfhout, G. (2014). Fun to read or easy to understand? Establishing effective text features for educational texts on the basis of processing and comprehension research (Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University).

Van Silfhout, G.

2014

Van Silfhout, G. (2014). Fun to read or easy to understand? Establishing effective text features for educational texts on the basis of processing and comprehension research (Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University).

3 (H.5/6)

Adding narrative information to school texts is supposed to enhance text appreciation and thereby text comprehension. However, previous research produced mixed results. We believe the inconclusiveness may be due to differences in the relatedness of the narrative content to the factual content. We examined the effects of presenting factual content in an expository or narrative genre on students’ text comprehension and appreciation. We distinguished two narrative versions on the basis of the degree of relatedness of the narrative content to the factual content. Furthermore, we investigated whether the effects of text genre on text comprehension are mediated by students’ appreciation, and whether reading proficiency and prior knowledge interact with the effects of text genre. 164 students from pre-vocational secondary education read three history texts (one version per text): an expository version that only contained factual content, a historical narrative to which related narrative information was added, and a fictional narrative that also contained less-related narrative information. Students obtained higher comprehension scores when they read expository texts than when they read fictional narratives, and they thought to have a better understanding of expository texts than of historical narratives, regardless of reading proficiency and prior knowledge. This study shows that school texts that only contain factual information seem the best recommendable type of school texts for pre-vocational students, while embedding already concrete history information within a narrative genre has little or even a detrimental effect.

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