Describes the development and the components of an instrument designed to assess the contents of educational materials. (JM)

Proposing two major shifts in how to involve low readers more effectively in textbook learning, this book suggests that students, even those with low reading skills, can learn to use mainstream textbooks, and that textbooks can be designed to make them more usable for all students. The book presents a series of instructional techniques that…

This textbook evaluation instrument is provided to assess (1) content properties; (2) instructional properties; (3) physical properties; (4) readability; and (5) other properties such as cultural mix, organization of text, and suitability for various grade levels in secondary level world geography and global studies textbooks. For the first three…

It has been customary to simplify texts to increase their readability for young readers. Recent studies suggest that it is the predictability of texts that is the key to their readability and that simplification may actually create problems for the reader. (RBW)

This project developed a checklist for examining college texts for adoption in situations in which several instructors use the same text to teach a large introductory, multi-sectioned college course. Fifteen students from Brenau College (Georgia) and 33 faculty members from several Georgia colleges were interviewed. Four computer software dealers…

Readability formulas can be useful tools in accomplishing their primary purpose--to give very general estimates of difficulty. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of misunderstanding regarding their use, which has resulted in misuse and abuse. The formulas were designed to be applied post hoc to existing materials. They were not intended to…

Many students from elementary school through college encounter difficulty understanding their science textbooks, regardless of whether they have language disorders. This article discusses some of the particular difficulties associated with science text comprehension and possible remedies for facilitating and enhancing comprehension of challenging…

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…

Designed to alert adult basic education teachers to the factors of readability and to suggest ways that some readability problems can be alleviated, this resource unit discusses the problems posed by readability formulas and suggests that teachers must both press for more readable adult texts and question intelligently the products of publishers…

The target population of this project consists of students enrolled in four regional vocational education centers which serve selected students who desire to receive enriched and specialized vocational education during the 11th and 12th years of public school. The project goals for the first year related to identification of students' reading…

The purpose of this study was to determine the compatibility of the reading level of students with the required power-mechanics textbooks used by senior industrial arts majors in the California State University and Colleges System. The data for this study were obtained from responses to the Schrammel-Gray High School and College Reading Test…

Discusses findings from a questionnaire survey of 622 biology teachers on: (1) how accurately they can judge readability of instructional materials; (2) what factors they consider when judging readability levels; and (3) if they considered differences in students' reading ability when selecting reading materials for them to use. (JN)

Differentiating textbooks is modifying or adapting textbooks in ways that make them easier for students to read and comprehend and then to retain what they have read. This book explains how teachers can motivate their students as they are confronted with text which is generally written in a "less-than-engaging" expository style. The strategies…