A focus of the Common Core State Standards/English Language Arts (CCSS/ELA) is that students become increasingly more capable with complex text over their school careers. This focus has redirected attention to the measurement of text complexity. Although CCSS/ELA suggests multiple criteria for this task, the standards offer a single measure of…

ESL instructors generally use ready-made reading materials in commercially published coursebooks. However, it would be more effective for learners if ESL instructors are involved in developing reading materials for them. This is because they are closer, more sensitive and responsive to the needs of their learners and they are also aware of the…

English education in Japan and Korea are similar in some respects. Although both countries are not completely but mostly monolingual societies, where citizens do not need English in their daily life, they have begun to realize the importance of English as a tool for international communication, and as a result their English education is becoming…

This paper reports the effects of the properties of source texts on summarization. One hundred and fifty-seven undergraduates were asked to write summaries of one of three extended English texts of similar length and readability, but differing in other discoursal features such as lexical diversity and macro-organization. The effects of…

Studies leads and other top paragraphs in stories from the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Scripps Howard News Service, and three major newspapers. Finds average lead sentence lengths range from 39 to 25 words. Suggests that journalists may be writing for themselves more than for readers. (RS)

A study of 25 expert teachers and their shared reading lessons in grades 3-8 suggests that teachers focus their modeling during shared reading in four categories: comprehension, vocabulary, text structures, and text features. (Contains 1 figure.)

Traces the career of Jack Stenner. Stenner made the empirical discovery that observable readability could be entirely predicted from word familiarity and sentence length, and applied this "Lexile Framework"(R) to books and readers. Discusses the use of the Lexile Framework as a way to target specific readers. (SLD)

Describes the development of a Spanish version of the Lexile Framework(R) and a Spanish readability equation. Discusses some differences between Spanish and English and how these differences affect the development of the Lexile measures. (SLD)

A reduced relative-main clause ambiguity occurs in sentences that begin with reduced relative clauses, as in "The hangman executed by the government was convicted of treason." This ambiguity has often been the focus of research designed to investigate the processes by which syntactic structures are built during sentence comprehension.…

Focusing on law school texts, reviews literature on the readability of texts and on the limitations of human cognition. The discussion includes a brief history of applicable design principles, a description of empirical studies supporting them, a discussion of the advantages of structured text, and an analysis of some implications of these design…

Questions the conventional assumption that reference books should simply be regarded as objective containers of information, and argues that personal style is sometimes an important element in the evaluation of reference books and that subjectivity and expressions of feeling may be as valuable as objectivity, detachment, and impersonality. (23…

Describes the Lexile Framework(R), which enables teachers to develop personalized instruction based on Lexile measures of reading ability and Lexiled reading lists. The Lexile Framework is based on the entire book, with individual reading ability measured by tests that measure on the same scale on which the books are measured. As an open standard,…

Describes uses of the Lexile Framework(R) in actual practice in Florida, Georgia, California, and North Carolina. As it connects reading comprehension tests, books, magazines, and newspapers to a common scale of measurement, the Lexile Framework can be used to form a community working for better reading. (SLD)

Describes the Lexile Framework(R), a tool for looking at reader ability relative to the difficulty of a text. It allows a parent, student, teacher, or media coordinator to understand the performance of a reader. Presents examples of current best practices in using lexiles. (SLD)

Defines good expository text and reviews studies on two text features--structure and interestingness--that affect readers' comprehension. Discusses implications for further inquiry. (JAD)