This article investigates the lexical and discourse features of English text and discourse with automated computer technologies. Specifically, this article examines the cohesion of English text and discourse with automated computer tools, Coh-Metrix and TEES. Coh-Metrix is a text analysis computer tool that can analyze English text and discourse…

Milton's style of pronominal reference in his essay, "Areopagitica," leads to a lack of comprehension at times and to slow processing. His use of demonstrative pronouns makes it difficult to identify antecedents precisely and quickly. For example, in one case a reader must go back over 400 words to find an antecedent. His use of relative…

Examines whether a discourse consistent with functional sentence perspective (FSP) theory, which predicts how units of information should be distributed in a sentence and how sentences should be related in a discourse, is more memorable and readable than one contradictory to FSP. (HOD)

In the writing of Matthew Arnold, integration, one great impression rather than many great individual lines, is the most important goal. In his essay, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," the "blocs" of his thought are in sets of two, three, or even four sentences: in effect, he writes much like a poet, in couplets,…

A review of research reveals that, although several reading researchers recognize the significance of grammatical complexity beyond the sentence in reading comprehension, little research exists in this area of grammatical interrelationships among sentences. The first step toward an understanding of grammatical complexity beyond the sentence is for…

Reports on a classroom experiment testing the hypothesis that the distance across which readers must integrate information is a factor in reading comprehension. Concludes that secondary school students found it more difficult to resolve semantic relationships beyond the sentence than those within the sentence. (FL)

A study was conducted to determine the effects of sentence length, sentence structure, and word frequency on the readability of textbook prose. Specifically, the study assessed the extent to which the factors, taken alone or in combination, affected the readability of two 1,000-word college textbook passages when the content remained the same. Two…

Excerpts from articles in the "British Medical Journal" and "The American Journal of Medicine" were compared to determine which journal was easier to read and what stylistic traits might account for such ease. Nine paragraphs from the discussion sections of articles on hypertension were taken from each of the journals. When…

One factor that contributes to the difficulty that a reader may encounter when reading a text is the syntactic complexity of the constructions used in the text. Examples of altered text constructions include the transformations of subjects of subordinate clauses, making them either the subjects or the objects of main clauses. When the conditions…

This report presents the text analysis of "Babar Loses His Crown," a story for beginning readers. (The techniques used in arriving at the analysis are presented in a Reading Center Technical Report, Number 168, "Problems and Techniques of Text Analysis.") Tables are given for a statistical lexical analysis and for a syntactic…

Explains how education majors try to learn to recognize thought unit sentences (ThUS's) and to gauge their difficulty. Shows examples of simple writing and discusses the task of writing ThUS's to match style and level of author. Gives a rationale for doing a readability analysis in this way. (FL)

Presents sample passages from children's readers to show deficiencies in the coherence of such texts, particularly in the way they relate to accompanying illustrations. (GT)