This report presents information regarding Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) guidelines as they relate to the Accelerated Reader program. The report states that a student's zone of proximal development is the range of book readability levels that will challenge a student without causing frustration or loss of motivation. It discusses factors…

The history of the evaluation of non-English written materials through the use of various mathematical formulae is reviewed. This process began in 1939 with Tharp's work in French, and has continued until the present. Formulas have been developed for Spanish, Russian, German, Hebrew, Chinese, and Vietnamese. In Europe, modifications of the Flesch…

The development of readability formulas for the evaluation of foreign language texts began with research in the United States on reading materials used in second language learning and has extended to many other countries first by adaptation of formulas intended for English language texts and then by original investigation. There exist now many…

"Writeability" is concerned with helping writers and editors produce materials on easier readability levels. A major input of most readability formulas is vocabulary difficulty. One way to increase readability is to use simple vocabulary or shorter words since word frequency studies show that more common words are shorter. The other…

The Fry Readability Formula was used to investigate the readability levels of stories contained in basal readers of the 1979 edition of the "Open Court" series for grades one through six. The average readability levels of the stories were then compared to those found in the 1976 edition of the same series. The purposes of the study were…

This paper on readability begins with a brief discussion of comprehension, including a definition, and then lists factors that influence comprehension, such as knowledge of vocabulary, long passages that are ambiguous, digressions, and unnecessary restatements. The paper then explores readability and presents a graph for estimating readability and…

Three readability formulas were recalculated to be more suitable for Navy use. The three formulas are the Automated Readability Index (ARI), Fog Count, and Flesch Reading Ease Formula. They were derived from test results of 531 Navy enlisted personnel enrolled in four technical training schools. Personnel were tested for their reading…

This paper summarizes the work to date on the revised Harris-Jacobson Readability Formulas. The contents include "The Criterion," which discusses the criterion used in the development of the formulas; "Variables Employed," which includes percent of uncommon words, average sentence length, percent of long words, mean number of letters per word, and…

Compares the Fry, Dale-Chall, and SMOG readability formulas and cautions users about their limitations. (RB)

Concludes that after 50 years, the McCall-Crabbs norms are out of date and need to be revised. (MKM)

Discusses why proper nouns should be counted and how to count syllables and words, recent work on the validity of readability formulas, and the readability graph extrapolated to college level. (JM)

Undergraduate students enrolled in a Principles of Psychology II course were asked to rate selections from introductory psychology texts for reading ease. These student ratings were then compared with the ratings obtained using the Flesch readability formula. Student ratings did not agree very well with the Flesch scores. (RM)