Text features are familiar parts of our everyday experience. We see them in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, textbooks, and on the internet. They used to be the special province of publishers and artists, but with the spread of personal computers they have become everyday items that we manipulate in memos, letters, e-mails, flyers, and dozens of other written texts. We use text features because we want to make a text more readable, emphasize certain points, influence and reader’s processing of the text, and probably to flaunt our computer literacy! In so far as text features enhance the text, they also serve as aids to reading.
Before we can explore the value of text features as an aid to reading comprehension, we must understand exactly what they are. A basic definition would go like this: changes made to printed materials that provide visual aspects different from standard print types.
Becoming conscious means recognizing when a text feature (such as headline or a picture):
Influenced our decision to read, or not to read, a given article.
Activated our background knowledge on a topic.
Led us to formulate a prediction about the information to follow.
Organized a set of ideas, clarified a concept, or confirmed our comprehension of the main idea.
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