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 article discusses how text variables interact with reader, strategy, and task variables to affect readability, including text coherence, text organization, signaling, and text structure. It considers how classic readability formulas, in concert with consideration of text, text reader, and strategy variables, can be used to match texts to…

This article discusses the reading fluency and comprehension problems of struggling secondary students who can read, with assistance, on a fourth-grade reading level or above. Difficulties with vocabulary and sentence construction are described, along with problems with pronoun reference and noun substitutions, metaphor, and conventions of print.…