The failure of readability formulas can be attributed to three weaknesses in the formulas. First, they ignore or violate current knowledge about the reading process. Most formulas affect only sentence length and word difficulty while ignoring factors that influence text comprehensibility, such as cohesion, the number of inferences required, the…

Proposes that prediction and production variables used together tap both text and reader factors and provide a much improved analysis of readability. Finds that this kind of analysis will lead to more specific kinds of pedagogical strategies for teaching writing. (MS)

The purpose of this book is to introduce the research on readability, defined here as reading ease. The first part of the book covers how people read. A series of national literacy surveys show that the average person in the U.S. and most other countries are adults of limited reading skills. For example, the average adult in the U.S. reads at the…

The problems arising from treating word and sentence complexity as the direct causes of difficulty in comprehension are surveyed in this paper from the perspective of readability formulas. The basic choices and assumptions made in the development and use of readability formulas are discussed in relation to the larger question of text…

Argues that both redundancy and propositional analysis (a strategy for analyzing meaning in a text) help to reveal the nature of the reader-text interaction and are two of the important missing elements in readability. (FL)

This article reviews research concerning the organizational, selective, and connective aspects of reading and then assesses the impact of constructivism on four reading-related issues in the United States: (1) readability of texts; (2) assessment of reading ability; (3) instruction in reading; and (4) conception of literacy. The article argues…

Reading comprehension is influenced by external factors and factors within the reader. A discussion of these factors and of the LaBerge reading model provides the context for methods of diagnosing and remediating reading problems. (Author/BW)

Recent research in text structure and comprehension has several important implications for readability theory and practice. First, text-level factors such as coherence and organization must be considered along with word-level and sentence-level factors when evaluating the readability of a specific set of materials or when attempting to construct…

A review of research reveals that, although several reading researchers recognize the significance of grammatical complexity beyond the sentence in reading comprehension, little research exists in this area of grammatical interrelationships among sentences. The first step toward an understanding of grammatical complexity beyond the sentence is for…

A review of the literature on the relationship between reading ability and mathematical ability shows the process of reading mathematics to be very different from the process of reading English prose. (AEA)

The relationship between writing and reading processes can be analyzed from several contextual perspectives. The contextual perspectives may be linguistic, social, schematic, or strategic. While the writer follows several steps in getting meaning into print, the reader may not be able to reverse perfectly these steps and get meaning from print.…

Reports on reading research studies conducted in Great Britain during 1979, noting that two areas have attracted much more attention recently--reading comprehension and the importance of motivation. (HOD)

This empirically-based model depicts the interactive, constructivist process of reading and three classes of variables that influence reading. Teacher variables include presentation, instructional intervention, instructional climate, and behavior management. Text variables include text language, relevance, organization, story structures, and…