Vivid elements in Dutch educational texts

Abstract

Educational publishers often make their expository texts more vivid, by making them emotionally interesting, concrete and imagery-provoking, and proximate in a sensory, temporal, or spatial way. Previous studies have found mixed results regarding the effects of vividness on the attractiveness, comprehensibility, and memorability of educational texts. In order to be able to account for these mixed results, we chart and describe the various ways in which educational texts can be made more vivid. Drawing from the literature on narrativity, we define prototypical narrative elements in the educational domain (i.e., particularized events, experiencing character, landscape of consciousness), and demonstrate that Dutch Social Studies and Science texts apply these elements in varying combinations. Subsequently, we illustrate how texts can be given a voice by imitating a direct, “here and now” author-student interaction.

Narrative Elements in Expository Texts

“…In a previous study, we have shown that Toolan's (2001) definition is well-applicable in the domain of Dutch educational texts, and that a narrative educational text can be characterized as exhibiting the following three narrative elements: 1) a sequence of non-randomly connected particularized events, that are 2) experienced by a specific character, of whom 3) readers gain insight into the inner world (Sangers et al, 2020).…”

“…However, not all Dutch educational texts prove to be fully expository (Sangers, Evers-Vermeul, Sanders & Hoeken, 2020). For example, the text in (2) presents a narrative about a prehistoric man named Iugas.…”

“…Narrative elements such as characters seem to be included in educational texts as a strategy to make these texts more engaging and better comprehensible, considering that many Dutch students find their educational texts too boring to read and/or too difficult to understand (Dood, Gubbels & Segers, 2020;Gubbels, Netten & Verhoeven, 2017;Gubbels, van Langen, Maassen & Meelissen, 2019;Inspectorate of Education, 2017, 2020, 2021Sangers et al, 2020). While the use of narrative elements seems to be an adequate means to solve these readability issues (cf.…”

“…While the use of narrative elements seems to be an adequate means to solve these readability issues (cf. Norris, Guilbert, Smith, Hakimelahi & Phillips, 2005;Sangers et al, 2020), we know little about how and to what extent these elements are used in present-day educational texts, and whether their distribution depends, for instance, on the school subject. Therefore, in this quantitative corpus-based study, we aim at gaining insight into the use and distribution of narrative elements in educational texts, focusing on the current Dutch educational practice.…”

Storytelling on Oral Grounds: Viewpoint Alignment and Perspective Taking in Narrative Discourse

“…However, fundamental questions about what determines transportation, identification, and effective narrative communication have yet to be answered. Review studies on narratives in health communication and educational texts found numerous differences in the experimental narratives used as stimuli in effect studies, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact determinants of narrative persuasion ( De Graaf et al, 2016 ; Sangers et al, 2020 ). Apart from great variation in length, modality, content, and context, which all inevitably influence the audience’s representation of a narrative, there are clues hinting at the importance of linguistic viewpoint phenomena.…”