Graphic novels in the K-12 classroom are most often used to motivate marginalized readers because of the lower text load and assumption of easy reading. This assumption has thus far been unexplored by reading research. This qualitative multiple-case study utilized think-aloud protocols in a new attention-mapping activity to better understand how…

In this conceptual essay, we offer rationales and evidence for critical components of a working model of text complexity for the early grades. In the first three sections of the article, we examine word-level, syntax-level, and discourse-level features of text, posing questions for future research. In the fourth section, we address elements of…

"The Critical Word Factor," based on word recognition demands of texts, is a measure of text difficulty designed specifically for texts used by beginning readers. The measure is a function of the number of new, unique words per 100 running words of text that fall outside a designated curriculum. The authors investigated the validity of the…

Finding meaning in an ordinary prose text and following a description or argument is generally considered less difficult than finding the essential message in a literary text. Sometimes, however, the emotional impact makes it easier for some readers with some texts to see and understand the meaning of some literary texts. Research from the…

Investigates hypothesis that topic familiarity and assessed difficulty of a text correlate positively with performance on reading comprehension tests. A study of 177 advanced students of English for Specific Purposes indicates that students' subjective evaluation of the relative difficulty of a reading text is not always a reliable index of their…

Uses miscue analysis to find patterns of reader strategies on two types of texts: a syntactically complex/high vocabulary newspaper editorial; and a syntactically simple/low vocabulary editorial. Suggests that teachers should guide students to focus on the contextual relationships found both within and beyond the sentence level. (MG)

A study investigated how students' mental representation of an expository text and the inferences they used in summarizing varied as a function of text difficulty and of differences in the task. Subjects, 96 college students and students from grades 6 and 10, wrote summaries of expository texts and answered orally several probe questions about the…