The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the broader college and career readiness agenda encourage educators, researchers, and other stakeholders to focus on preparing students for life after high school. A key emphasis is literacy, as the ability to read and comprehend written language is critical to success in college and careers.…

Reviews the literature and research on readability. Examines early formulas that relied on sentence length and difficulty of vocabulary, the subsequent use of cloze procedure to measure text readability, and other factors now recognized as influences on the comprehensibility of a text. Concludes that readability formulas have not served education…

This booklet describes and discusses a method for determining the readability level of prose passages in reading materials for children. The method discussed in the booklet assigns a value to each noun in selected passages on the basis of its frequency level on standard word-frequency charts, correlated in a number of studies with independent…

Noting that readability formulas are strictly text-based and therefore do not reflect the interactive nature of the reading process, this paper argues that many of the instructional material evaluations for which such formulas are used are inappropriate and offers more reader-based alternatives to the use of formulas. The first half of the paper…

Discusses elements other than reading level that can affect ease of understanding vocational materials. Groups these elements into four major areas: (1) vocabulary, (2) sentence structure, (3) organization (the way sentences are arranged into paragraphs), and (4) relevance (the way the author relates the topic to the reader's experience). (LRA)

In spite of their limitations, readability formulas can help teachers determine whether there are differences between students' reading abilities and the difficulty levels of the textbooks they are required to use. A study was conducted to assess the reading levels of students and the readability levels of textbooks at five selected junior…

Readability formulas can be useful tools in accomplishing their primary purpose--to give very general estimates of difficulty. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of misunderstanding regarding their use, which has resulted in misuse and abuse. The formulas were designed to be applied post hoc to existing materials. They were not intended to…

Describes a phrase analysis system called PHAN that can be used to assess the degree and nature of potential stumbling blocks to comprehension within a passage or book. (FL)

These exercises and examples pertain to readability information presented in preceding articles. They are designed to help speech language pathologists test their intuitions about word and text difficulty and to see readability data from a number of quantitative formulas applied to passages across a wide range of levels. (Contains 8 references.)…

Examples are provided that show readability in action in diverse settings. The first shows how readability analysis resulted in a new fluency monitoring protocol in three school districts in Northern California. The others present hypothetical school, clinic, and research situations that a speech language pathologist might encounter. (Author/CR)

Presents guidelines for use in examining the comprehensibility of a textbook, questions to ask about the book, and suggestions for using the guide questions. (FL)

This book presents a method for the qualitative assessment of text difficulty, a method that relies on a total impression rather than on an analysis of text features. The method is based on matching samples of text to exemplars that have been scaled for comprehension difficulty. These exemplars range in difficulty from those suitable for the…

Provides a checklist that considers "learnability" factors as well as "understandability" factors to use as an alternative to readability formulas. (MKM)

Describes a study designed to determine the differential effects of text with and without logical linguistics connectives (e.g., because, since, as a result) on developmental college readers' comprehension. Results strongly suggest that text with explicit connectives facilitates readers' ability to make inferences. Discusses implications for…

Intended as a resource of staff-tested activities for two-year college faculty, staff, and administrators, this manual is a compilation of representative materials from training workshops conducted, as a professional development project, to increase instructor skills and knowledge regarding intervention in reading deficiency of postsecondary…