Introducing Young Children to Expository Texts through Nonverbal Graphic Representations

Abstract

Expository texts represent reality in a logical-scientific way. They often consist of written language and nonverbal graphic representations, such as tables and graphs, each conveying some of the text meanings (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). Expository texts are prevalent in the academic world and the educational system, and are challenging at all levels of education (Berman & Nir, 2009).
 The current study explores preschool children’s production of expository texts: when they need them, what resources they choose, and how these contribute to text meaning. Method: Participants were four Israeli preschool teachers and their students, aged 3-6 years. In each preschool, the teacher documented text production events, describing the context of text production, transcribing children’s conversations and adding comments explaining the photographed texts. Text analysis included identifying genre markers (Coutinho & Miranda, 2009), text functions (Donald, 1991), verbal and nonverbal representations and text layout (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006).
 Findings: The children produced texts of six genres: a definition, an observation table, a bird guide, an information sheet, an instruction manual, and a bi-lingual dictionary. These helped them store and retrieve information, monitor their own behavior and communicate with others. Diverse types of representations were used: written words for naming, drawing for shapes, numerals for quantity and length, and tables for organizing data. The study shows that nonverbal graphic representations enrich children’s text producing resources, and may help them gradually grasp and appropriate expository text genres.