33.3682, Review: Applied Linguistics: Sangers (2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3682. Mon Nov 28 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3682, Review: Applied Linguistics: Sangers (2022)

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Date: 
From: John Schriner [jschriner at qcc.cuny.edu]
Subject: Vivid educational texts


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.1402

AUTHOR: John Schriner
TITLE: Vivid educational texts
SUBTITLE: Engaging students via narrative and voice elements
SERIES TITLE: LOT Dissertation Series
PUBLISHER: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke
(LOT)
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: John Schriner

SUMMARY

This book functions as a collection of studies examining narrativity
and voice in Dutch 5th and 8th grade textbooks. Each chapter builds on
the proposed further research of the last chapter.  This scaffolding
of studies brings the reader through the process of hypothesizing and
then substantiating.

In Chapter 1, Sangers defines vividness and strategies of vividness,
including the use of narrative and voice elements in the domain of
education. Narrative texts aim to harness the readers’ attention and
provide vividness that is both emotionally interesting and
imagery-provoking. Voice elements are approximate in a sensory,
temporal, or spatial way, and they aim to bring the content closer to
the reader by creating an interaction between the author and the
reader. Voice elements may assume a conversational style, they may ask
questions of the reader, or they may speak directly using “you” and
“we” pronouns.

Chapter 2 explores how authors of Dutch educational texts for primary
school use narrative and voice elements. Sangers defines prototypical
narrative elements as containing particularized events, one or more
experiencing characters, and a landscape of consciousness (Sangers,
2022, p. 23). As we explore different strategies of vividness through
text examples, we see that these methods help to explain
non-expository elements in the text, be it in fully narrative texts or
texts that contain only one element. Sangers explains: “this vivid way
of embedding to-be-learned information in a metaphorical structure
elicits student engagement. It is supposed to give the students the
feeling that they are present in the forest they are reading and
learning about, as if they were observing the forest themselves”
(2022, p. 38). This absorption or transportation (cf. Green & Brock,
2000) is often an effect brought about by narratives (Sangers, 2022,
p. 37), using the instruction to “imagine,” which seeks heightened
vividness.

Chapter 3 addresses what prior research tells about narrativity in
educational texts. Particularly useful, Sangers invokes Ryan (2007) in
approaching texts not as a binary for narrative-or-not, but rather to
examine texts on a scale of narrativity: “a text is most narrative if
it contains all prototypical narrative elements” (Sangers, 2022, p.
48). Seven studies were selected that examined dependent variables
such as comprehension, perceived comprehension, and recall. These
studies contained 26 experimental texts that Sangers coded for
narrative elements described above. Most narrative texts were found to
contain all three prototypical elements, but interestingly half of the
expository texts also contained one or more elements. From the
findings, Sangers notes that “it seems that students do not have a
strong preference for either a more or less narrative text” (2022, p.
67). By noting and designing a more stark manipulation distance
between purely narrative texts and purely expository texts, Sangers
believes that further research would reveal whether or not students
really tend to appreciate narrativity. Knowing if narrativity was
appreciated or not would allow publishers to remove narrative texts if
ineffective and include more if aiding in comprehension. The text
fragments used for the experiment doesn’t allow a definitive answer
either way and Sangers calls out to the scientific community to make
their data open to benefit further research through reproduction of
studies or allowing further insight into narrativity in educational
texts.

Chapter 4 begins a series of quantitative research in the form of
corpus-based analysis. 45% of current Dutch educational texts (N=999)
were found to contain narrative elements. The texts were manually
coded for containing the elements, with 10% of the corpus also coded
by an independent annotator. Using R and statistical packages, as
hypothesized, analysis found that the extent to which these elements
occur depends largely on the genre of textbook: narrativity occurred
most frequently in history texts, and less frequently in biology,
human geography, and physical geography. Of the elements, an
experiencing character was most common (N=293), closely followed by a
particular event (N=282), and then landscape of consciousness (N=253).
This study showed that narrative elements are common in contemporary
Dutch primary school textbooks.

Chapter 5 continues the work in quantitative research in the form of
corpus-based analysis. The corpus in this study (N=1055) also
consisted of biology, human geography, physical geography, and history
texts. This analysis focused on voice elements that were meant to
interact with the reader such as questions, exclamations, evaluations,
imperatives, or direct addressing (e.g. “you”). Voice elements were
more frequently found in biology and geography than in history, which
already conveys imaginable and relatable material.

Chapter 6 examines the results of focus groups with Dutch education
textbook publishers that questioned the rationales for including or
excluding narrative and voice elements. The discussion and findings
were fruitful, echoing many of the hypotheses earlier in the book.
With two focus groups and five publishers, questionnaires and
discussion showed that the to-be-learned material is essential,
leaving little room for narrativity, despite previous findings that
these elements are quite common in these textbooks. The publishers
note that while some students benefit from the motivation and
activation aided by narrative elements, other students do not benefit
from these, so publishers tend to mix these strategies in the text. A
common worry among publishers is that narrativity distracts the
students from the to-be-learned material, so they employ a strategy to
incorporate just enough of these elements. In fact, one publisher
noted that van Silfhout (2014) found that concrete expository texts
without fictionalized narrative elements led to students’ higher
comprehension scores. As supported by the corpus work in chapters 4
and 5, experts tend to prefer voice elements to narrative elements in
biology and geography educational texts. Publishers view narrative
elements, however, as unique selling points for marketing the books to
teachers for adoption.

Chapter 7 describes a study of fifth graders’ (N=99) appreciation of
voice elements in educational texts. Since 60% of the texts in
Sangers’ corpus in biology, geography, and history contain one of the
six types of voice elements listed above in the Chapter 5 summary,
these three tasks were designed to determine whether or not students
preferred voice elements over fully expository text. In the first
task, students were asked to rate texts for different aspects of
appreciation and to answer a reading comprehension question via
recall. The findings for this task showed that students did not
appreciate one form over the other. The second task asked the students
to choose a voice or non-voiced text, with the option of “no
preference.” When forced to choose which they preferred, students
found the voiced text “nicest to read” and “addressing most directly”
but largely found that both texts were equally “most clearly written.”
The third task was for students to identify style differences in the
previously-read texts.  When primed and asked to focus on stylistic
differences, 41 of the 99 students were able to identify relevant
differences in the texts.

Chapter 8 is the general discussion and conclusion, summarizing the
studies and findings, offering many directions for further research,
as well as practical implications for educational publishers.
Appendices include source textbook titles, statistical model tables,
publisher focus group questions, and the complete texts from the study
of fifth graders’ text appreciation in Chapter 7.


EVALUATION

First, it must be noted that in this collection “further research” is
not just proposed, but rather methodically pursued throughout. While
typically the reader is often left wanting in terms of some possible
future research, Sangers conducts the research and works to give us a
more complete picture.

This volume continues empirical research in the fields of education,
reading studies, cognitive psychology, and early adolescent learning
and development. An audience interested in effective writing styles
for comprehension would find this volume valuable, while the robust
statistical work is clearly described. Any confusing elements of the
text are often explored and expounded on in each chapters’ Discussion
and Conclusion sections.

While I began reading the collection on the premise that students
often find educational texts boring or difficult to understand, when
the author solicited feedback from students (Chapter 7), texts that
contained voice elements were only slightly more appreciated than
non-voiced texts. We clearly need to delve into how appreciation is
related to comprehension and recall. It is likely that “most clearly
written” would indicate better comprehension. Would “addressing most
directly” or “nicest to read'' indicate desired engagement? Is it
correct to claim that the voiced text prevails as preferred while the
“addressing most directly” choice is simply a characteristic of a
voice element? Sangers reminds us throughout the volume that
consistent, empirical data needs to be collected, offering us more
insight into students’ engagement with text ranging from the fully
expository to the fictional narrative and its effectiveness. Work in
this area would need to have greater manipulation distance between the
two kinds of texts so that we can trust the findings. Sangers found
that van Silfhout’s (2014) work had just this error: the expository
texts contained prototypical narrative elements.

As this book is a collection of studies, it was noted by Sangers that
there is some repetition.  Several figures and textual examples are
repeated in the chapters, but it did not detract from the messaging;
the repetition functioned to solidify terms and examples. Another
reader, however, may find this repetition strange in a monograph,
while perfectly normal for isolated studies.

Although we have made strides in understanding narrative and voice
elements in Dutch textbooks, querying publishers, and surveying
students, we still have not yet seen that increasing vividness leads
to enhanced text comprehension. While posited many times in the text,
this hypothesis is unsupported. Indeed: “It is yet to be determined to
what extent these elements [...] lead to enhanced text comprehension”
(Sangers, 2022, p. 161). Would the subtitle of the volume be better if
it had a question mark, so as not to lead the reader astray?

In the last chapter Sangers offers many directions for future
research. Sangers maintains “at present no firm conclusions can be
drawn about the relative effectiveness of narrative elements in
educational texts” (2022, p. 161). Empirical research is simply
lacking in this area. Sangers rightly works towards Open Science,
maintaining that the way forward, the way we approach effectiveness,
will be like putting pieces together in a puzzle. This starts with
generalizable and well-defined terms such as the “prototypical
narrative elements” and “voice elements.” These terms may be used in
other domains and this volume may be used as a model. Corpora with
more texts need to be created and computational tools can certainly
aid researchers, alongside R.

The goals of the volume were to examine Dutch educational texts, and
to define and identify two types of elements that lend to vividness,
“thereby enhancing students’ engagement and text comprehension:
narrative and voice elements” (Sangers, 2022, p. 163). The corpus
studies were particularly valuable in that Sangers found narrative
elements present in 45% of the texts, and voice elements present in
over 60% of the texts. There is still much work to be done, but this
volume and Sangers’ work in this area is a welcome addition to the
literature.


REFERENCES

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the
persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of personality and social
psychology, 79(5), 701.

Ryan, M.L. (2007). Toward a definition of narrative. In D. Herman
(Ed.), The Cambridge companion to narrative (pp. 22-36). Cambridge
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521856965

Sangers, N. (2022). Vivid educational texts. Utrecht Institute of
Linguistics. https://www.lotpublications.nl/vivid-educational-texts

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. Netherlands Graduate
School of Linguistics.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

John Schriner is a librarian and assistant professor at the City
University of New York.  He holds a Master of Library Science, a
Master of Science in Digital Forensics and Cybersecurity, and a Master
of Arts in Computational Linguistics.  His research interests include
cybersecurity, machine-learning, early Soviet linguistics, and corpus
linguistics.



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