Een Leertekst Toegankelijker Maken
W. Drop | Vakgroep Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde Afdeling Taalbeheersing Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht
Study-texts may give problems to learners because they do not present their contents clearly enough.
In order to understand a text one should be able to regard it as a complex of parts, interrelated by specific links. Parts the size of simple sentences may be understood "in one go", i.e. one may grasp them in an internal representation. Larger parts may be understood in abbreviated form, in a representative statement. A complex of larger parts may be understood in their representative statements and the specific relations between them.
For the recognition of parts in a text and the recognition of the specific relations between them (which very often are not formulated explicitly or specifically) one requires anticipation based on knowledge, on schemes.
For a text to be clear, it must not only be formulated in such a way that the elements at sentence level may be grasped in an inter-nal representation by the reader, and in such a way that the links are easily identifiable. The text must also mark its larger parts and make the representative statements easily recognizable, for instance through frontpositioning in the unit.
In addition the text must contain signals which enable the reader to anticipate on the larger parts and their links, thus promoting the identification of the markings and enabling the reader to recog-nize unmarked parts and their links as well.
It is demonstrated how a history text may be made more accessible without affecting the contents. Changes in formulation have only been made in so far as they are necessary for increasing the possi-bilities for identification of the structure.
Article language: Dutch