Using captioned media as mentor expository texts

Abstract

Children ages 2–18 spend between two and four hours per day watching TV, a calculation that is even higher if DVDs, videos and the Internet are included. Although the amount of television watched by today's children has raised concerns about their literacy development, captions could hold a key to turning television into an educational asset. Captions are printed text which represents the audio component of a program and like the audio, reflects the heart of the program's message. Research shows that watching and reading captioned programs increases children's comprehension. Captioned programming and transcripts of documentaries are readily available. They can be used for teaching greater comprehension of expository text structures and as mentor texts for learning to write expository texts.