Addressing the student

Abstract

Voice elements are those elements of educational texts that authors use to interact with students, such as questions, evaluations, or direct address forms (“you”). These elements are intended to enhance students’ engagement and comprehension, but we know little about the extent to which they are used in present-day educational texts. Using a corpus of Dutch biology, geography, and history texts for grade 5 and grade 8 (N=1055), this study shows that voice elements are barely differentiated over grade levels. Conversely, voice elements are generally diversified over school subjects, as they are less frequent in history texts, which convey readily imaginable and relatable content, compared to biology and geography texts, which discuss less relatable content for which students need to exert more effort to connect it to their own world. This finding suggests that authors of educational texts have intuitions about the conditions under which voice elements are a desirable attribute.

You Can Help Us! The Impact of Formal and Informal Second-Person Pronouns on Monetary Donations

“…These findings support the idea that generic you is effective not only because it generalizes over people, but also because it simultaneously addresses the reader. The fact that generically used second-person pronouns reinforce resonance between people and ideas (Orvell et al 2020) is probably the reason for their widespread use in various contexts, such as advertisements (Christopher 2012), educational texts (Sangers et al 2022), and charity fundraising (Macrae 2015). Generalizations are known to have an inclusive effect in the sense that interlocutors use them to emphasize their mutual agreement (Scheibman 2007).…”