In this experiment, we examined whether linguistic text complexity affects effects of explaining modality on students’ learning. Students (N = 115) read a high-complex and a low-complex text. Additionally, they generated a written or an oral explanation to a fictious peer. A control group of students retrieved the content. For the low-complex text, we found no significant differences between conditions. For the high-complex text, oral explaining yielded better comprehension than writing explanations. The retrieval condition showed the lowest performance. Mediation analyses revealed that the effect of explaining modality while learning from the high-complex text was mediated by the personal references and the comprehensiveness of the generated explanations. Our findings suggest that the effect of explaining modality emerges when students are required to learn from difficult texts. Furthermore, they show that oral explaining is effective as, likely due to increases of social presence, it triggers distinct generative processes during explaining.

在本实验中，我们检查了语言文字的复杂性是否会影响解释情态对学生学习的影响。学生（N = 115）读取高复杂度和低复杂度的文本。此外，他们向虚构的同伴产生了书面或口头解释。对照组的学生检索了内容。对于低复杂度的文本，我们发现条件之间没有显着差异。对于高复杂度的文本，口头解释比书面解释产生了更好的理解力。检索条件显示性能最低。中介分析显示，从高复杂性文本中学习时解释情态的效果是由个人参考和所生成解释的全面性所介导的。我们的发现表明，当要求学生从困难的课本中学习时，解释情态的效果就会出现。此外，他们表明口头解释是有效的，因为可能是由于社会存在的增加，