A new study has shown that even a basic textbook, which typically consists of just one sentence or paragraph, can be improved by incorporating two or more sentences or paragraphs into a single text.
In fact, the researchers found that even simple texts with only one sentence, like a grade book, can become more meaningful by adding a second or third sentence or even three, in order to make it more digestible.
In a study published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, a team led by professor of communication and linguistics Roberta P. Miller of the University of Chicago’s Media Lab and her colleagues tested how well a kindergarten reading curriculum could be made plural in terms of vocabulary, structure, and content.
Using a sample of 473 elementary and middle school students, Miller’s team tested how their vocabulary, grammar, and structure were improved when reading a reading book with a title like “The Book of the Day,” or a sentence like “I saw a man dressed as a dog.”
The results, published in PLOS One, showed that students who read the textbook were more likely to be able to understand the meaning of the text.
“It’s like an elementary school textbook,” Miller told Fox News.
“It has the words, but you have the structure.
And it has structure, but the vocabulary is missing.”
Miller’s team also tested a second version of the same textbook that had two sentences instead of one, to see if students who were able to grasp the meaning were also more likely have the same success with the text as students who didn’t read the second version.
Results showed that a two-sentence version of a kindergarten textbook improved students’ comprehension by 28 percent, and a three-sentences version improved students by 43 percent.
The only problem was, the students who had read the two-sides had to read the third version before they could even begin to understand it.
The study also looked at a sample text of an English grammar book and found that students in both versions who had been given the first version of their grammar book had an even more pronounced improvement in their comprehension.
“This shows that students can get the message,” Miller said.
“If you give a text a name, students will begin to recognize it as that.
If you give it a structure, they will begin using that structure as their structure.”
For more information about education, including the best books to read, visit Fox News Education