In recent years, readability formulas have gained new prominence as a basis for selecting texts for learning and assessment. Variables that quantitative tools count (e.g., word frequency, sentence length) provide valid measures of text complexity insofar as they accurately predict representative and high-quality criteria. The longstanding…

Some individuals with developmental dyslexia are able to acquire age-appropriate reading comprehension abilities by the time they reach postsecondary education. This study explored the role that study strategies have with secondary students with dyslexia in achieving age-appropriate reading comprehension skills. The findings of this study…

Reading is an indispensable skill for learners who desire success throughout their academic lives, and vocabulary knowledge is a sine qua non companion of reading comprehension. Despite being inextricably related entities, very little has been written about the necessary vocabulary coverage to understand an expository text and its equivalent in…

This study investigated the complexity of leveled passages used in four classroom reading assessments. A total of 167 passages leveled for Grades 1-6 from these assessments were analyzed using four analytical tools of text complexity. More traditional, two-factor measures of text complexity found a general trend of fairly consistent across-grade…

A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

The assessment of learning in large online courses requires tools that are valid, reliable, easy to administer, and can be automatically scored. We have evaluated an online assessment and learning tool called Knowledge Assembly, or Knowla. Knowla measures a student's knowledge in a particular subject by having the student assemble a set of…

This paper describes and reports on the performance of six related artificial neural networks that have been developed for the purpose of readability analysis. Two networks employ counts of linguistic variables that simulate a traditional regression-based approach to readability. The remaining networks determine readability from "visual…

The first purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between changes made during the development of written instruction and the effectiveness of the materials when presented to students. For this purpose, the Written Instruction Stylistic Evaluation was used to assess the comprehensibility of passages before administration of the…