ABSTRACT
Good writing is largely a matter of rewriting. This chapter describes three methods of rewriting expository instructional text to improve its learnability. Two of the methods have been applied by us to rewriting expository instructional text that was originally written by others. We have tested the rewritten instructional texts against the original texts for instructional effectiveness. The results showed a large and consistent advantage in favor of rewritten texts, on tests of learning designed to be fair to both the original and rewritten texts (Britton, 1995a; Britton & Gulgoz, 1991; Britton & Tidwell, 1991, 1993; Tidwell, 1992). These two methods are scientific in the sense that they are based on the observation of phenomena of naturally occurring expository instructional texts (Britton, 1992; Britton, van Dusen, Glynn, & Hemphill, 1990), supplemented by experimental investigation of them, leading to their theoretical explanation, and resulting in a systematic procedure that can accomplish the complex task of rewriting expository instructional text to increase its learnability. Our third method is more like an art, and has not yet been tested empirically.
