READABILITY RESEARCHERS HAVE MADE ADVANCES IN THE PAST FEW YEARS, INCREASING THE ACCURACY OF READABILITY FORMULAS BY AS MUCH AS 75 PERCENT. THIS PROGRESS WAS POSSIBLE LARGELY BECAUSE RESEARCHERS IN SEVERAL DISCIPLINES DEVELOPED RESEARCH TOOLS WHICH AIDED IN THE STUDY OF READABILITY. PSYCHOLOGISTS DEVELOPED THE CLOZE PROCEDURE INTO AN ACCURATE AND…

This study related the style of writing found in literature for children and the relative level of readability of this material. Cloze tests of readability on 10 passages from five juvenile biographies of Lincoln were given in 1 week to a hemogeneously grouped upper elementary school reading class (n=28) in suburban Detroit. The mean T-unit…

Procedures and findings of three reading comprehension studies are reported. The first study compared cloze readability test scores for 130 pairs of students (grade 3 through college) with scores indicating the information gained from reading. Students gained little or no information when they could not answer more than 25 percent of the cloze…

Some 2700 Belgian students (grades five through twelve) participated in this study of the relationships between linguistic features of passages and passage readability estimated from cloze procedures. Clozed versions of each of 60 test passages were prepared and administered to students at various grade levels. Twenty-five linguistic features of…

The methodology used to determine readability of English texts (cloze procedure and word lists) is not applicable to foreign-language material. Linguistic variables are proposed as the basis for readability formulas. Contrastive and error analysis are possible strategies. (JB)

Because vocabulary control in children's reading materials is largely based on vocabulary lists and studies which are now obsolete, new areas of learning are being considered for developing beginning reading materials. Instead of basing vocabulary lists on frequency counts and adult reading materials, the three approaches examined here are…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether high school subject matter text which was revised on the basis of secondary school students' oral reading miscues that result in grammatical re-transformations had greater readability than the original text. The subjects, 217 students, were randomly selected and were assigned to stanine levels…

IN AN EFFORT TO DEVELOP ACCURATE FORMULAS FOR PREDICTING AND CONTROLLING THE READABILITY OF LANGUAGE, FIVE BASIC PROBLEMS WERE STUDIED--(1) THE VARIOUS FEATURES OF WRITING STYLE AS LINEARLY RELATED TO COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES, (2) THE CHANGE OF STRENGTHS OF RELATIONSHIPS AS A FUNCTION OF READING ABILITY, (3) READABILITY PREDICTION MADE UPON…

The reading research studies presented in this volume address questions that incorporate more than one culture, language, or writing system, illustrate a broad conceptualization of the study of reading, and represent the expanding international consciousness and program of the International Reading Association. Part one offers the following…