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Reference
Are Easy Language Best Practices Applied in Educational Texts for Children in French?
CASALEGNO, Elisa, BOUILLON, Pierrette, RODRIGUEZ VAZQUEZ, Silvia
Abstract
Prior research identifies children with aphasia, learning difficulties, and cognitive and hearing impairments as part of the primary target groups with legal rights to Easy Language (EL) texts (Hansen-Schirra and Maaß 2020). However, little is known about the potential of EL texts for children and adolescents in general, regardless of their reading abilities. Psycholinguistic studies have shown that some practices, such as the use of anaphoric expressions (Joseph et al. 2015) or temporal connectors (Lecorvé 2020) could have an effect on children's reading comprehension. In this context, it would be interesting to have a closer look at EL and educational texts to highlight shared patterns and pin down what their distinctive features are.
Our ultimate goal is to empirically test whether EL texts can be successfully used as a tool to enhance Universal Design for Learning (UDL). As a first step towards this goal, we conducted a study aiming to identify common guidelines among different sets of EL principles used in French-speaking countries and investigate whether educational texts for children aged 7-12 comply with them. [...]
CASALEGNO, Elisa, BOUILLON, Pierrette, RODRIGUEZ VAZQUEZ, Silvia. Are Easy Language Best Practices Applied in Educational Texts for Children in French? In: International Easy Language Day Conference (IELD) 2021, Germersheim (online) - Germany, 27-28 May 2021, 2021
Available at:
http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:152752
Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.
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Are Easy Language Best Practices Applied in Educational Texts
for Children in French?
Elisa Casalegno Pierrette Bouillon
Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez
Dept. of Translation Technology
Faculty of Translation and Interpreting
University of Geneva
Plan
Context
Goals
Methodology
Results
Discussion
Future work
Context
• EL has been originally designed for adults with reading difficulties
• This target group might have some characteristics in common with children with or without reading difficulties
• Prior studies have focused on single practices to improve readability for children (Joseph et al. 2015; Lecorvé 2020)
• Some of these practices are compatible with EL rules
• Is it possible to further simplify educational texts or do they follow
the same rules as EL texts?
Goals
• Identify common guidelines among different sets of EL principles (step 1)
• Investigate whether educational texts for children aged 7-12
comply with such guidelines (step 2)
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
Methodology (step 1)
• Corpus made of 5 popular sets of EL principles in French
• Guidelines extraction (segments)
• Guidelines annotation
O’Brien (2003) Casalegno, Bouillon, Rodríguez-Vázquez (2021)
Lexical (21) Lexical (12)
Syntactic (28) Syntactic (9)
Text Structure (12) Text Structure (9)
Pragmatic (7) Pragmatic (4)
Typography (7)
Methodology (step 1)
Lexical Pragmatic Syntactic Text structure Typography
Abbreviation/Acronym Usage Paragraph structure Mood Capitalisation Special characters
Anaphoric reference Specificity of information Negation Emphasis Alignment
Clarity Textual devices Person Information load Colour
Connective usage Tone Punctuation Information structure Font
Date format Segment independence Layout Format
Numbering Sentence structure Line break Padding
Polysemy Subordination Paragraph length Page number
Quantifier usage Tense Sentence length
Synonymy Voice Use of parentheses
Vocabulary usage Word division
Word length
Categories for Easy Language rules:
Methodology (step 1)
Lexical Pragmatic Syntactic Text structure Typography
Abbreviation/Acronym Usage Paragraph structure Mood Capitalisation Special characters
Anaphoric reference Specificity of information Negation Emphasis Alignment
Clarity Textual devices Person Information load Colour
Connective usage Tone Punctuation Information structure Font
Date format Segment independence Layout Format
Numbering Sentence structure Line break Padding
Polysemy Subordination Paragraph length Page number
Quantifier usage Tense Sentence length
Synonymy Voice Use of parentheses
Vocabulary usage Word division
Word length
Categories for Easy Language rules:
Lexical Pragmatic Syntactic Text structure Typography
Abbreviation/Acronym Usage Paragraph structure Mood Capitalisation Special characters
Anaphoric reference Specificity of information Negation Emphasis Alignment
Clarity Textual devices Person Information load Colour
Connective usage Tone Punctuation Information structure Font
Date format Segment independence Layout Format
Numbering Sentence structure Line break Padding
Polysemy Subordination Paragraph length Page number
Quantifier usage Tense Sentence length
Synonymy Voice Use of parentheses
Vocabulary usage Word division
Word length
Methodology (step 2)
• Corpus made of 4 articles for children in French
• Articles annotation
Methodology (step 2)
• Corpus made of 4 articles for children in French
• Articles annotation
https://ptitlibe.liberation.fr/ https://www.1jour1actu.com/
Methodology (step 2)
• Corpus made of 4 articles for children in French
• Articles annotation
Corpus size:
Words Segments Words Segments Words Segments
T1 442 30
T2 521 35
T3 425 29
T4 451 40
963 65
1839 134
876 69
Methodology (step 2)
• Corpus made of 4 articles for children in French
• Articles annotation
Subjective rules:
3 external francophone annotators with some
linguistics knowledge
Objective rules:
1 internal annotator with advanced linguistics
knowledge
Results (overview)
Lexical Pragmatic Syntactic Text structure Typography
Abbreviation/Acronym Usage Specificity of information Negation Emphasis (1) Alignment (1)
Clarity Textual devices Punctuation Emphasis (2) Alignment (2)
Date format (1) Tone (1) Voice Information load (1) Alignment (3)
Date format (2) Tone (2) Information load (2) Alignment (4)
Numbering (1) Tone (3) Information structure Colour (1)
Numbering (2) Layout (1) Colour (2)
Quantifier usage Layout (2) Colour (3)
Synonymy Layout (3) Colour (4)
Vocabulary usage (1) Layout (4) Font (1)
Vocabulary usage (2) Layout (5) Font (2)
Word length Line break (1) Font (3)
Line break (2) Format (1)
Sentence length (1) Format (2) Sentence length (2) Padding (1)
Padding (2) Padding (3)
Results (overview)
Lexical Pragmatic Syntactic Text structure Typography
Abbreviation/Acronym Usage Specificity of information Negation Emphasis (1) Alignment (1)
Clarity Textual devices Punctuation Emphasis (2) Alignment (2)
Date format (1) Tone (1) Voice Information load (1) Alignment (3)
Date format (2) Tone (2) Information load (2) Alignment (4)
Numbering (1) Tone (3) Information structure Colour (1)
Numbering (2) Layout (1) Colour (2)
Quantifier usage Layout (2) Colour (3)
Synonymy Layout (3) Colour (4)
Vocabulary usage (1) Layout (4) Font (1)
Vocabulary usage (2) Layout (5) Font (2)
Word length Line break (1) Font (3)
Line break (2) Format (1)
Sentence length (1) Format (2) Sentence length (2) Padding (1)
Padding (2) Padding (3)
Lexical Pragmatic Syntactic Text structure Typography
Abbreviation/Acronym Usage Specificity of information Negation Emphasis (1) Alignment (1)
Clarity Textual devices Punctuation Emphasis (2) Alignment (2)
Date format (1) Tone (1) Voice Information load (1) Alignment (3)
Date format (2) Tone (2) Information load (2) Alignment (4)
Numbering (1) Tone (3) Information structure Colour (1)
Numbering (2) Layout (1) Colour (2)
Quantifier usage Layout (2) Colour (3)
Synonymy Layout (3) Colour (4)
Vocabulary usage (1) Layout (4) Font (1)
Vocabulary usage (2) Layout (5) Font (2)
Word length Line break (1) Font (3)
Line break (2) Format (1)
Sentence length (1) Format (2) Sentence length (2) Padding (1)
Padding (2) Padding (3)
Results (1/5)
The corpus complies with the following rules:
Date format write dates in full Quantifier
usage avoid percentages and big numbers, use more general expressions such as
“few”, “many”…
Emphasis use bold formatting for titles
Layout use pertinent titles and subtitles to structure information + do not use more than two sub-titles levels
Tone use a positive and polite tone
Alignment do not justify the text + do not indent the first line Font use a bigger font for titles
Padding add an extra space before and after titles and sub-titles
Colour avoid coloured backgrounds + avoid excessive colour
Results (2/5)
The corpus partially complies with the following rules [subjective sub-set]:
Clarity avoid abstract words, write concretely and clearly Vocabulary
usage avoid technical words, professional jargon and foreign words + use current words known by the target readers
Information
load write simple sentences with only one main idea or action per sentence + avoid complex structures and superfluous information
Information
structure follow a logical and chronological order Specificity of
information explain unusual, abstract or technical words in a simple way or use everyday life examples
Textual devices avoid figures of speech, symbolic language and metaphors
Tone use the right language for the target readers
Results (3/5)
The corpus partially complies with the following rules [objective rules sub-set]:
Abbreviation/
Acronym usage avoid using abbreviations, initials and acronyms
Numbering write numbers in numbers, not letters + avoid roman numbers Synonymy avoid using synonyms to indicate the same concept
Word length avoid long words, use words with one or two syllables Negation avoid negation, use affirmative sentences
Voice avoid passive voice, use active voice
Results (4/5)
The corpus partially complies with the following rules [objective rules sub-set]:
Emphasis to highlight important information, place it at the beginning of the document, repeat it, format it in bold, use lists or boxes
Layout use a simple and essential layout
Alignment align body text to the left + align titles to the left Font use max 2 fonts per document
Padding leave margins of 2,5-3 centimetres
Colour avoid writing in colour + pick high contrast between text and background
Results (5/5)
The corpus never complies to the following rules:
Date format instead of specific years, use phrases such as “a long time ago”
Punctuation avoid using commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, parenthesis, ellipses and any special characters
Sentence length use short sentences (7-12 words) + write one sentence per line
Line break start a new sentence on a new line, instead of adding a comma or a
conjunction + add a line break where there would be a natural pause while
speaking
Discussion
• Goal 1: identify common guidelines Achieved, but
• Categories are linguistically debatable
• Discrepancies or even contradictions between different sets of guidelines
• Goal 2: check compliance
• The corpus complies with most rules (completely or partially)
• There are some commonalities between educational texts for children and EL texts potential for adults?
• The corpus does not comply with some rules
Future work
• There is a margin for further simplification if we want to create EL materials for children
• Improvements to the present study:
• Larger corpus of educational texts
• More specialised annotators (teachers?)
• Include less frequent rules (1/2 sets of guidelines)
References
Freyhoff, Geert, Hess, Gerhard, Kerr, Linda, Menzel, Elizabeth, Tronbacke, Bror I. and Kathy Van der Veken. 1998. Le Savoir-Simplifier.
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Hansen-Schirra, Silvia, and Christiane Maaß. 2020. ‘Easy Language, Plain Language, Easy Language Plus: Perspectives on Comprehensibility and Stigmatisation’. In Easy Language Research: Text and User Perspectives, edited by Silvia Hansen-Schirra and Christiane Maaß, 2:17–38.
Easy - Plain - Accessible. Berlin, Heidelberg: Frank & Timme.
Inclusion Europe. 2009. “Information for All. European Standards for Making Information Easy to Read and Understand.” https://inclusion- europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2113-Information-for-all-16.pdf
Joseph, Holly S. S. L., Bremner, Georgina, Liversedge, Simon P. and Kate Nation. 2015.“Working memory, reading ability and the effects of distance and typicality on anaphor resolution in children”. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 27(5), 622–639.
Lecorvé, Gwénolé. 2020. ‘Textes pour enfants’. In Traitement automatique du style dans le langage naturel : quelques contributions et perspectives. Habilitation à diriger des recherches, 29–36. Université de Rennes 1, France.
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Ruel, Julie, Allaire, Cécile, Moreau, André C., Kassi, Bernadette, Brumagne, Alexia, Delample, Armelle, Grisard, Claire and Fernando Pinto da Silva. 2018. Communiquer pour tous. Guide pour une information accessible. Saint-Maurice : Santé publique France.
Ruel, Julie, Kassi, Bernadette, Moreau, André C. and Sonia Larissa Mbida-Mballa. 2011. Guide de rédaction pour une information accessible.
Gatineau: Pavillon du Parc.
Tronbacke, Bror I. 1999. Directives pour les documents faciles-à-lire. The Hague, The Netherlands: IFLA, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.
