A study examined the first grade materials in five new basal programs submitted for the 1993 Texas state adoption. (The programs were those of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Houghton Mifflin; Scott Foresman; Macmillan/McGraw-Hill; and Silver Burdett Ginn). These series are compared with program materials currently in use in the state. The analysis…

Written authorial commentary, or metadiscourse, in social studies texts helps students anticipate context, goals, text organization, and author perspective, and results in texts that readers find interesting and easy to remember. An analysis of informational and attitudinal metadiscourse instances in nine social studies textbooks and nine…

A study was conducted to examine the relationships of four areas of textual design factors that are relevant to external students' learning as they use their course study guides: the micro and macro textual features, the linguistics, and the instructional design elements. Twelve external students from two units at the Gippsland Institute were…

Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest examines the current state of the plain English movement, which is an effort to persuade government agencies, businesses, and professional organizations to write in clear, understandable English. After enumerating the benefits that the use of plain English can generate…

Aimed at media professionals, students, and all others interested in better writing, this booklet is intended to share the wisdom on editing and writing distilled from the experience and thinking of the Associated Press Institute (API) staff and seminar attendees. Following an introduction, the booklet's first section--on writing--presents:…

A study was conducted to apply what is known about how expository text structure variables enhance main idea comprehension and to determine if restructuring content textbook passages improves such comprehension. Original texts were rewritten to be more "considerate" as follows: the paragraph main ideas were rewritten and placed in the…

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…

A readability formula for elementary Spanish instructional materials was developed by building on previous research, particularly in regard to the application of the Fry readability graph to Spanish language materials. The study began with the selection of average sentence length and number of syllables per 100 words as independent variables.…

This guide outlines a model that adult educators can use to construct a test for their adult students, regardless of subject area, that is written at the students' reading level. The problems that written tests pose for trade and technical students in further education (FE) who have poor reading skills and the drawbacks of using commercially…

A study examined students' ability to comprehend consistent or inconsistent text when activating relevant or irrelevant background knowledge. Fifty-five grade six students reading at or above grade level were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: activated/consistent, nonactivated/consistent, activated/inconsistent, and…

To determine whether social studies texts used in the intermediate grades of British Columbia (Canada) schools were easier than those analyzed in a 1974 study, the Fry Readability formula was applied to all the grade 4-7 social studies texts prescribed and authorized for use in 1979-1980. It was found that the British Columbia texts are extremely…

This bibliography provides citations to studies of word/letter frequencies and vocabulary applications based on issues of word frequency. While the original intent was to gather information pertinent to developing communication board vocabularies for argumentative communication systems, these resources should be useful for a variety of word…

Cloze tests assess the readability of a book for students in a far more personal way than formulas or standardized tests of reading comprehension. The cloze procedure reflects the total language abilities in the following ways: familiarity with sentence structure, context clues, and vocabulary, and the ability to draw inferences from written…

Prepared for use by teachers interested in producing their own audiovisual aids, this guide outlines a step-by-step approach to the design and development of instructional slide-tape packages. It is divided into nine sections, each of which describes a set of activities forming a unique part of the audiovisual production sequence: (1) preliminary…

Intended for writing teachers, this paper shows how "pithy prescriptions" for writing, such as "use definite, specific, concrete language," can be misleading or wrong. To support this thesis, the paper examines a technical writing book advocating short sentences and finds that it has sentences averaging 27.8 words in one section and 30.18 in…