Content Area Reading

Reading is one of the main tools for learning (Richardson, Morgan, & Fleener, 2006) especially in higher education in which reading to learn has long been its feature (Guthrie, 1982b). Thus, reading to learn in the content areas, which also known as functional reading (Mohan, 1986), is the essential skill that should be possessed by college students to be able to learn through texts. Specific aspects of content in texts require reading and thinking techniques which might be different from other aspect

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since reading in the content areas is shaped by the unique conceptual, textual, and semantic demands of each area (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Moje, Dillon, & O’Brien, 2000). For example, reading mathematics texts would require different cognitive demand from reading historical texts.

Reading in content areas can be approached from various perspectives, including cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and critical (Fang, 2012). The cognitive approach, in particular, has been adopted by McTigue and Slough (2010) to propose the accessibility attributes of science text. The cognitive theories supporting the attributes include dual coding theory (Sadoski & Paivio, 2004) for text concreteness, construction-integration theory (Kinstch, 2004) for text coherence, and multimedia learning theory (Mayer, 2002) for visual aspect of texts. Since the five attributes of the accessibility of science texts are supported by some cognitive theories, they might be adaptable for other content area including statistics. In addition, science is close to statistics from its philosophical thinking of empiricism (Popper, 2014). To make the attributes adaptable, specific aspects of statistics contents need to be considered.

However, due to the limited studies on statistics text analysis, the readability of mathematics texts proposed by Shuard and Rothery (1984) were referred in addition to statistics text features suggested from literature. In the following sections I introduce the five attributes of text accessibility of science text (McTigue & Slough, 2010), followed by critical components related to the readability of mathematics text (Shuard

& Rothery, 1984). Subsequently, recent studies on multimedia learning with relate to text comprehension were discussed.

2.5.1 Five attributes of text accessibility for science text

The components required for a text to be accessible for readers may also include arrangement of ideas in texts, vocabulary, syntax, clarity of author’s intentions, and readers’ interest and familiarity with text (Collins, 1994). More specific to the

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comprehension of science texts, McTigue and Slough (2010) have synthesized five key accessibility attributes as: (1) the concreteness of text; (2) the voice of the author;

(3) coherent writing structure; (4) selective use of visual information; and (5) integrated verbal and visual information.

Text concreteness. The concreteness of text as an important factor for enhancing interest, overall comprehension and recall of science texts were addressed by McTigue and Slough (2010) by referring to dual coding theory (Sadoski & Paivio, 2004). That is, the concrete language can naturally evoke images and corresponding cognitive connections between the text and images. In addition to using the concrete language for explanation, using specific and supporting examples to illustrate abstract concepts are also considered to reinforce text concreteness in science texts.

Voice of author. Similar to text concreteness, voice of author is also suggested to be related to readers’ interest and engagement. While texts with flat and lifeless tone will hard to engage reader, the accessible science text is expected to have a distinct voice and concrete examples. This attribute may include additional information and interesting sentences used by the author to support the main idea in the texts.

Text coherence. A coherent text, on the other hand, both has an overall structure and helps readers see the overall structure. Meyer (2003) suggested that the logical order of ideas presented in a coherent text can help readers read more quickly and remember more than a text presented in a disorganized way. This concept of coherent text in science was presented based on Kinstch’s (2004) construction-integration theory, that is, one way to help reader make an appropriate inference when reading is by providing clues to the links between discrete units of information in the text. The use of signals including headers, summaries, and signal words in the text is regarded as clues which can assist reader see the overall structure.

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Selective use of visual and verbal. Regarding the visual information, McTigue &

Slough (2010) discussed the features of graphical displays and the integration of the verbal and visual information to assist learning which are based on Mayer (2002) multimedia learning theory. They argued that the choice of graphical display and the intention of the written text should be matched for the texts to be accessible. For example, pictorial forms are useful at illustrating an object of science, while diagrams can symbolize movement and change.

Integrated visual and verbal. On the other hand, the visual and verbal texts need to be integrated by providing support for each other and should be placed in the same visual field. The integration can be also supported by the effective use of captions and labelling in the as well as notations within the texts to direct reader’s attention to the visual information.

2.5.2 Critical components related to the readability of mathematics texts

In their book of “Children Reading Mathematics”, Shuard and Rothery (1984) analyzed the possible critical components affecting the difficulties experienced by students in reading mathematics texts and identified some criteria to improve the readability of texts. The components encompass the content features of mathematics text and the visual appearance of the text. The content features were categorized as verbal elements (i.e., vocabulary and syntax), nonverbal elements (i.e., symbols and graphic language of diagrams, pictures and illustrations), as well as the way in which the content meaning is presented in the text (i.e., flow of meaning). At a very different level, the visual appearance of text (i.e., layout of the page, typing style, and color) was also included as components affecting text readability.

First, the verbal elements which might affect reading difficulty include unfamiliar words, confusion meaning of Mathematical English (ME), no context word,

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and lexical familiarization. More specifically, three categories of words in ME were identified by Shuard and Rothery (1984): (1) words which have the same meaning in ME and OE; (2) words which have a meaning only in ME; (3) words which occur in both OE and ME, but have a different meaning in ME from their meaning in OE.

Second, regarding the nonverbal elements, Shuard and Rothery (1984) suggested that careful attention need to put in the arrangement of text and diagram, since both text and diagram in mathematics need very detailed processing. It is important to ensure that the diagram was placed close to the text to make it as easy as possible for the reader to refer backwards and forwards between the text and diagrams. In addition, the use of conventions of shading, coloring, scale, and motion is also essential to show the ideas in a mathematical diagram.

Third, while the verbal and visual elements make up the detailed level at which text must be read, the way to present the text to express the intended meaning also affect reading difficulty. To enable reader to reach the new understanding in reading mathematics texts, the text must have a clear “story line” or flow of meaning as the arguments are arranged within a passage. Three types of meaning units were distinguished as: (1) statements which are made in the text; (2) statements which can only be discovered in questions or tasks; and (3) meaning units which have to be inferred from texts or from readers’ background knowledge. Analyzing the meaning units within a passage may be useful in trying to understand the difficulties which students find in a particular passage.

Last, the visual appearance of the page in which the material is presented can facilitate reading and attractive, specifically for young readers. The qualities of visual appearance of the page can be achieved through a careful choice of the layout of the page, the type of style used in printing and the use of color. Several ways in presenting qualified layout are also related to content features such as the position of text and

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diagram in the texts. Besides, having unnecessary signals removed and good using of color will be more attractive for reader.

2.5.3 Combination of verbal and visual information for text comprehension

Several recent studies suggest that learning from the combination of verbal and visual information (i.e., multimedia) can result in a better comprehension compared to learning with text only (e.g., Mayer, 2002). In particular, the better comprehension of the visual information is found to be related to a better overall comprehension of the text (Schwonke, Berthold, & Renkl, 2009). In another study of eye-tracking by Jian and Wu (2015), it was found that students who read the diagram first tend to process the semantic messages of the diagram and spend shorter gaze duration while reading the following text. This phenomena might be explained by the fact that students tend to use the information extracted from pictures as scaffolds for initial mental model construction (Eitel, Scheiter, Schüler, Nyström, & Holmqvist, 2013; Schnotz et al., 2014), which might determine how selectively and intensively the succeeding information will be processed (Molitor, Ballstaedt, & Mandl, 1989). Hence, it is important to design learning texts which can stimulate readers to process the information in picture before reading the text.

On the other hand, the fact that students tend to process the semantic messages of the diagram also indicates that labeled diagrams facilitate semantic information in the initial processing stage of decoding words (Jian & Wu, 2015; Mayer, 1989; Mayer & Gallini, 1990). The labelling of pictures can be regarded as signaling technique, which has been shown to improve learning when used in learning materials (Clark & Mayer, 2008; Mayer, 2005). Specific for graph comprehension, the visual features of the graphs influence the early phase in cognitive processing (Freedman &

Shah, 2002; Friel, Curcio, & Bright, 2001). That is, when relevant information is

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explicitly represented in the visual features of the graphs and can be easily linked to prior knowledge, the comprehension will be effortless.

Nonetheless, some studies argued that the detailed information provided in the learning text is not always beneficial for comprehension. For instance, Schnotz and Bannert (2003) argued that, depending on the contexts of task, the detailed graphics may either benefit or interfere with mental model construction. Hence, providing information in the graphs need to be done with cautions as it might related to redundancy effects which can increase cognitive load (Shah & Hoeffner, 2002).

Reading a box plot involves reading the five key summary statistics marked on a number line that show the locations of quarter points of data. In addition to the five statistical notions, there are also information about percentages of data in particular area of the box plots, including the left and right of the whisker, the central box, and the area on the left and the right of median line within the box. Referring to cognitive load theory (Sweller, Van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998) the information to be processed in a box plot exceeds the limit of human working memory capacity and, thus, may increase cognitive load for comprehend the box plot. Therefore, it can be argued that a box plot provided with detail information keeps extraneous cognitive load low and leaves more working memory capacity for learning processes.