Designed to alert adult basic education teachers to the factors of readability and to suggest ways that some readability problems can be alleviated, this resource unit discusses the problems posed by readability formulas and suggests that teachers must both press for more readable adult texts and question intelligently the products of publishers…

The problems arising from treating word and sentence complexity as the direct causes of difficulty in comprehension are surveyed in this paper from the perspective of readability formulas. The basic choices and assumptions made in the development and use of readability formulas are discussed in relation to the larger question of text…

Examines the traditional criteria for evaluating first and second language reading texts. Proposes that, if reading is interaction between a text and a reader, variables related to the reader's side of the process, global textual properties, content characteristics, and rhetorical and discourse features should be considered before linguistic…

Researchers investigating study strategies have observed that the textbooks themselves often contribute to students' comprehension and learning difficulties. Teachers, by being aware of qualities of inconsiderate texts, can identify poorly written texts, can prepare students for difficulties in upcoming sections of the text, and can instruct…

Intended to help teachers both improve students' text comprehension and better understand the teaching-learning process involved, this book focuses on comprehension and concept development as the central core of an effective educational program. The book's five sections deal with teaching explicit comprehension skills, precomprehension and…