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Hideous fonts boost reading comprehension | ||
Tags: Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5267 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 1 of 6 19 January 2011 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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This was in Salon.com today:
"A recent study out of Princeton, and brought to wider attention by Jonah Lehrer at Wired.com, suggests that ugly, irregular fonts can boost the amount of information readers retain from a text, while easy-to-read type is more likely to just sort of slide out of their minds. The study, titled "Fortune Favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of Disfluency on Educational Outcomes," found that people remembered more from worksheets and PowerPoint presentations when they were composed in a hot mess of hated fonts like Monotype Corsiva, Haettenshweiler and the dreaded Comic Sans Italic. The hypothesis is that the added difficulty in reading these texts forces more cognitive engagement, which leads to greater comprehension. While we naturally think that we learn better from texts that are pleasant and easy to read, the opposite may be the case." Hideous Fonts I wonder if I copy text from another language that I'm learning and paste it into Word in Comic Sans Italic if it would aid my learning? Edited by iguanamon on 19 January 2011 at 1:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5127 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 2 of 6 21 January 2011 at 8:33am | IP Logged | ||
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LOL!
And comic sans ms in Italic isn't allowed on my note pad app, darn. Edited by CheeseInsider on 21 January 2011 at 8:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5701 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 6 21 January 2011 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why stop there? If making text harder to read improves engagement and retention, why not
just study while slapping yourself upside the head. Then you can also have fine control on just how much cognitive engagement you get by simply varying the force and with what objects you hit yourself with. I tested this theory with a cast iron pan and am happy to report, that I remember clearly every word I read before I passed out—all three of them. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ilperugino Pentaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 5179 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 6 21 January 2011 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Try instead reading cyrillic. That may not aid you right away but will surelly boost some kind of learning... Edited by ilperugino on 21 January 2011 at 11:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6664 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 5 of 6 22 January 2011 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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What would be the effect of reading really bad handwriting? It certainly seems as unpleasant as an ugly font, and I've had to read some very "difficult" writing, but I got more discouraged than anything else.
I've had the experience of reading foreign languages handwritten by people with what I would charitably call "exotic" handwriting, handwriting that seems to be the visual equivalent of a foreign accent, and it never made it easier to read or remember. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5231 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 6 of 6 22 January 2011 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say the trick only works if you're really interested in working out what the text says, which is kind of unpredictable.
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