This paper reports the observed behaviors and difficulties that eleven precalculus and calculus students exhibited in reading new passages from their mathematics textbooks. To gauge the effectiveness of these students' reading, we asked them to attempt straightforward mathematical tasks, based directly on what they had just read. These …

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…

Presenting an overview of the theoretical perspective underlying work on text analysis in progress at the Center for the Study of Reading (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois), this report emphasizes the work that group has undertaken on stories for children in grades one through five. The report discusses three factors, drawn from a theoretical model,…

Offers an analogy between passing a written driving test and actually driving a vehicle, and evaluating textbooks by the number of syllables in words and by sentence length and the students' ability to actually read the textbook. Provides an open textbook inventory to evaluate how well students interact with the book. (JC)

The article discusses three features of content area textbooks that make them relatively easy to read, understand, and learn from--structure, coherence, and audience appropriateness. For each feature, the article describes the research basis for the feature, outlines problems with existing textbooks, and presents suggestions for evaluating…

Reports that high school remedial readers perceived good stories to be good stories despite adaptations in readability and length, and poor stories were not helped by improving readability or decreasing length. (FL)

Discusses why social studies is suitable for multilevel textbook programs, and important features of viable multilevel textbook programs are examined. A sample unit of study for a high school U.S. history course using multilevel texts is provided. A list of easy-reading secondary grade social studies materials is also included. (RM)