The effectiveness of English Language Teaching (ELT) materials significantly influences the learning outcomes of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, positioning these resources as cardinal in the acquisition process. Despite this widely acknowledged significance, there remains a notable gap in research concerning the evaluation of key…

Science curriculum standards were mapped onto various texts (literacy readers, trade books, online articles). Statistical analyses highlighted the inconsistencies among readability formulae for Grades 2-6 levels of the standards. There was a lack of correlation among the readability measures, and also when comparing different text sources. Online…

This study of English as a second language (ESL) reading textbooks investigates cohesion in reading passages from 27 textbooks. The guiding research questions were whether and how cohesion differs across textbooks written for beginning, intermediate, and advanced second language readers. Using a computational tool called Coh-Metrix, textual…

The widely adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) call for raising the level of text complexity in textbooks and reading materials used by students across all grade levels in the United States; the authors of the English Language Arts component of the CCSS build their case for higher complexity in part upon a research base they say shows a…

A study was conducted to evaluate the level of difficulty of textbooks (French and Sciences) written in French for use with sixth grade students. A cloze test was administered to a sample of sixth grade students in two francophone districts in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, and the Henry readability formula was applied to the same texts.…

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…

College students can read, but they often lack the prereading and postreading skills needed to help them think about and respond to what they read. A three-step plan can help students read and understand the text more fully. The first step entails using measures of fitness to determine: (1) the grade level of the text being considered and how it…

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…

Prepared by members of the Institute for Research on Teaching and the Center for the Study of Reading, the papers in this collection examine reading comprehension as an interactive process and explore how comprehension instruction occurs in the complex workplace of the classroom. Specific topics discussed in 20 papers include the following: (1)…