A recent Educational Testing Services report (2016) found that international graduate students with a TOEFL score of 80--the minimum average TOEFL score for graduate admission in the United States--usually possess reading subscores of 20, equating to a 12th-grade reading comprehension level. However, one public flagship university's international…

This study examined the effects of passage and presentation order on progress monitoring assessments of oral reading fluency in 134 second grade students. The students were randomly assigned to read six one-minute passages in one of six fixed orders over a seven week period. The passages had been developed to be comparable based on readability…

Reviews readability research and suggests priorities for future research in the area. (MKM)

Research indicates that three samples may not give a good indication of a workbook's narrative readability level. (MKM)

Reports that the Fry readability graph can be adapted to measure Spanish readability at the primary level. (DD)

This paper describes the Harris-Jacobson Readability Formula A, a revision of a readability formula based on word lists from "Basic Elementary Reading Vocabularies." Section one of the paper discusses procedures for using the formula, including the selection of samples, scoring the variables, and applying the formula. The next section…

Findings indicate that different readability formulas will not record the same degree of change in readability level if easier synonyms are inserted, sentences shortened, or text rewritten for simplification. (MKM)

Reports on a study that examined 15 randomly selected issues of a newspaper to determine if the readability scores for stories written in different writing styles are consistent when assessed by different tests. (HOD)

Found that standard readability indexes by themselves are not useful in measuring readability and comprehensibility of income tax material. Also casts doubt on the use of only readability indexes to measure insurance, labor, and real estate contracts. (PD)

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was analyzed by readability formulas which represent varying criterion of comprehension from 50 to 90 percent. If an examiner wishes to ensure 90 percent comprehension of the inventory items, nine years of successful schooling seem necessary. (Author/SJL)

Takes issue with E. Fry's widely accepted claim that the average readability of a book is ascertainable on the basis of only three samples; reports that numerous samples were needed to estimate readability means of 36 basal workbooks. (MKM)

A study of the readability of governmental pamphlets produced by the State of Florida, based on the use of the Flesch Reading Ease Formula and the Dale-Chall Formula, suggests that if a seventh or eighth grade readability level is considered an appropriate standard for public information brochures, the brochures tested may be too complex…

Supports the results of a previous study that concluded that the Farr-Jenkins-Paterson formula resulted in a more difficult readability level than the Flesch Reading Ease formula, the Dale-Chall Readability formula, and the Fry Readability Graph, and that the Fry Readability Graph is accurate within one grade level. (MS)

This study was done to see if readability levels printed on recreational reading books were as accurate as when the Fry formula and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level were applied to them. Three descriptive passages from each of 60 recreational reading books were analyzed using the Fry formula and the Flesch-Kincaid formula. The data was compared to…

This study examined the McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading to determine whether selections of passages covered a sufficiently wide range of difficulty to warrant their use in developing readability formulas. The results, which find several readability formulas suspect, are discussed. (Author/MT)