Friendly texts and text‐friendly teachers

In recent years, researchers have focused on the particular features that make a text "considerate" or "friendly" (Anderson & Armbruster, 1981, 1986; Langer, 1983; Singer, 1986; Tierney, Mosenthal, & Kantor, 1984). We define a friendly text as one that has features that facilitate learning from it. Although numerous features have been identified (Singer & Donlan, 1989), this article explains eight categories of friendly text features, illustrated with examples drawn mainly from sixth-grade social studies textbooks. It also discusses extra-text determinants that need to be considered when predicting whether or not a text is friendly. These include: the resources a reader has for interaction