In this study, the student texts and teacher guides of two reading intervention programs for at-risk, first-grade students were analyzed and compared: Fountas and Pinnell's "Leveled Literacy Intervention" (LLI) and Scott Foresman's "My Sidewalks" (MS). The analyses drew on the framework of available theory and…

The concept of readability has had a variable history, moving from a position where it was considered as a very important topic for those responsible for producing texts and matching those texts to the abilities and needs of learners, to its current declining visibility in the education literature. Some important work has been coming from the USA…

Using 48 college texts, comparisons were made of Dale-Chall Readability Formula results based on samples taken from various page intervals. (HOD)

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…

Reports two investigations, one related to the readability of certain basal readers and the other related to teacher knowledge of varying levels of readability of textbooks.

Finds that student perceptions of readability and interest levels in two upper-level college composition texts varied from the Flesch and the Fry readability and human interest formulas. (SR)

This article describes readability assessment methods used in science education, summarizes reported readability estimates of science textbooks, and recommends strategies for reducing the readability load of such materials. (JMF)

The development of a readability formula designed to determine the readability level of German instructional materials at the elementary level is discussed in this paper. The readability formula which was developed is called the German Readability Graph and is similar to the Fry Readability Graph. Syllables and number of sentences are counted per…

Early in the 20th century, educators began looking for scientific methods for matching texts with readers. Some of the best minds in education dedicated themselves to this task, including Edward L. Thorndike, William S. Gray, Ralph Tyler, Edgar Dale, Irving Lorge, and Jeanne S. Chall. The purpose of this book is to bring students of reading into…

Shows how a number of readability measures developed in English were applied to a textbook written in Hindi. Emphasizes that the more recent approaches to readability that focus on syntax, conceptual difficulty, and organization are a teacher's best help in selecting materials for students. (SR)

Reports findings of a study that examined the extent to which the variability observed in reading levels of common junior high textbooks was also present in four popular high school social studies texts. (FL)

Writing, editing, and printing texts for schools has been the accepted role of publishers, while text researchers have concentrated on typography, content, and readability. The hundreds of readability formulas now available make readability the most sophisticated of these three areas. Research in reading comprehension suggests that publishers…

The study reported in this paper was designed to describe the differences between the reading-difficulty levels of primary textbooks used in first-semester freshman general studies courses and the reading skills of the students enrolled in those courses, and to compare the Flesch Reading Ease Formula with the SMOG Grading Formula. Separate…

Two readability formulas were applied to two math and two reading series textbooks at the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade levels to see whether the publishers' suggested reading levels were accurate. Five samples were taken from each text and compared to the publishers' suggested usage according to grade level. Results showed that although formulas…

To assist textbook adoption committees in answering the questions that arise as they consider basal reading series, this paper provides a discussion of readability. Following a brief introduction, the second section of the paper offers a background discussion of what readability really means. In addition, this section looks at three factors to…