The texts in the textbooks are one of the basic materials in terms of conveying elements such as achievement, value, and competence in the curriculum. The fact that the texts are suitable for the level of the students helps the students understand and analyze the text better. In this study, it is aimed at determining the readability levels of the…

An interactive open-source calculus textbook is compared to a popular commercial textbook. Structured as a non-inferiority study, use of the open-source textbook does not harm student outcomes, and there is evidence that the open-source textbook is better than the commercial textbook in promoting post-course enjoyment of mathematics and confidence…

Viewing its use in language teaching mainly as a text corpus, this article examines the problem of the assessment of suitability of this material for use in the Greek language course in Cyprus schooling. The suitability of texts for use in language teaching is defined by four parameters, which are described in detail in this article: text…

Undoubtedly, foreign language teaching intends to make students obtain the required competence so as to get the linguistic knowledge needed in a foreign language. With this respect, a textbook should supply to the users as much as possible, be satisfactory to fit into the syllabus, and meet all the needs and expectations of the students during the…

Selecting appropriate texts for L2 (second/foreign language) learners is an important approach to enhancing motivation and, by extension, learning. There is currently no tool for classifying foreign language texts according to a language proficiency framework, which makes it difficult for students and educators to determine the precise…

The authors evaluated principles of macroeconomics textbooks for readability using Coh-Metrix, a computational linguistics tool. Additionally, they conducted an experiment on Amazon's Mechanical Turk Web site in which participants ranked the readability of text samples. There was a wide range of scores on readability indexes both among…

A corpus of current editions of statistics textbooks was assessed to compare aspects and levels of readability for the topics of "measures of center," "line of fit," "regression analysis," and "regression inference." Analysis with lexical software of these text selections revealed that the large corpus can…

To aid secondary school and college level economics teachers as they select textbooks for introductory economics courses, this article recounts how teachers can use the Flesch Reading Ease Test to measure readability. Data are presented on application of the Flesch Reading Ease Test to 15 introductory economics textbooks. (Author/DB)

Sixty-one psychology textbooks were analyzed according to four criteria: student acceptance and interest, readability and human interest, comprehensiveness and size, and psychobiological content. This analytic approach can be used in all subjects to match text selection with course objectives in order to increase student satisfaction. (AM)

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)

Offers a worksheet for evaluating the readability of content area textbooks. (RL)

Readability formulas typically yield results stated as a number or grade equivalent. However, results of one formula may not be compared to another because formulas use different criteria to measure readability. A description of eight popular formulas illustrate this point. Suggests that other factors be considered when selecting reading…

Discusses factors that psychology professors should consider when selecting a textbook for introductory courses. These include readability, human interest level, comprehensiveness, and authoritative accuracy of the material. (RM)

Notes the readability level of many high school chemistry textbooks is far above students' reading levels. Conducts two separate studies, making every effort to keep the two classes as similar as possible in all aspects except text. Finds strong evidence that changing the chemistry textbook resulted in an increase in student achievement. Suggests…

Reports on the evaluation of readability levels of 16 public speaking textbooks and 7 skills-oriented interpersonal communication textbooks. Finds sizable differences among public speaking textbooks. Advocates using readability data in the process of textbook selection and suggests how to do so. (SR)