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.