Project KonText
The role of causal connectors in primary text comprehension
The KonText project investigates how grammatical features of texts and individual characteristics of readers (e.g. multilingualism) influence text comprehension. The focus is on the comprehension of linguistic means of indicating basic sequential relationships, so-called causal connectors (e.g. because, since, therefore). The project aims to find out (i) whether explicit labelling of causal relations facilitates text comprehension, (ii) for which causal connectors this is true, and (iii) which students benefit from this.
According to the Primary Standards, one of the expected skills in the area of reading comprehension is for pupils to identify explicit text information or information that can be obtained by simple inference, and also to use linguistic means to secure the context of the text. These linguistic means include connectors (e.g. because). These mark relationships between facts (e.g. causality) but are neither necessary nor sufficient to create coherence. Understanding causal relationships is the focus of the project. Particularly in texts designed to convey knowledge, where relationships cannot be inferred from prior knowledge or world knowledge, it is crucial to be able to identify cause and effect or cause and effect. It is interesting to note that causal relationships can be expressed using different connectors (e.g. because, since, therefore, namely, because of).
Despite initial empirical findings that causal connectors facilitate text comprehension, it is still unclear on which individual characteristics of the reader (multilingualism, reading ability, working memory) this positive effect depends. It is also unclear whether the positive effect can be observed for all explicit markers of causal relationships or whether there are differences with respect to the connector and its grammatical features. The present project addresses these questions.
Funding
