Cloze items are a foundational approach to assessing readability. However, they require human data collection, thus making them impractical in automated metrics. The present study revisits the idea of assessing readability with cloze items and compares human cloze scores and readability judgments with predictions made by T5, a popular deep…

Worked examples, which present an explained code for solving typical programming problems are among the most popular types of learning content in programming classes. Most approaches and tools for presenting these examples to students are based on line-by-line explanations of the example code. However, instructors rarely have time to provide…

The ability to objectively quantify the complexity of a text can be a useful indicator of how likely learners of a given level will comprehend it. Before creating more complex models of assessing text difficulty, the basic building block of a text consists of words and, inherently, its overall difficulty is greatly influenced by the complexity of…

Response time has been used as an important predictor of student performance in various models. Much of this work is based on the hypothesis that if students respond to a problem step too quickly or too slowly, they are most likely to be unsuccessful in that step. However, something that is less explored is that students may cycle through…

While hierarchical machine learning approaches have been used to classify texts into different content areas, this approach has, to our knowledge, not been used in the automated assessment of text difficulty. This study compared the accuracy of four classification machine learning approaches (flat, one-vs-one, one-vs-all, and hierarchical) using…

Text complexity has received increased attention due to the CCSS, which call for students to comprehend increasingly more complex texts as they progress through grades. Quantitative text complexity (or readability) indices are based on text attributes (e.g., sentence lengths, and lexical, syntactic, & semantic difficulty), quantified by…

Computational tools and resources play an important role for vocabulary acquisition. Although a large variety of dictionaries and learning games are available, few resources provide information about the complexity of a word, either for learning or for comprehension. The idea here is to use frequency counts combined with intralexical variables to…

Despite prevalent use and practical application, the current and standard assessment of oral reading fluency (ORF) presents considerable limitations which reduces its validity in estimating growth and monitoring student progress, including: (a) high cost of implementation; (b) tenuous passage equivalence; and (c) bias, large standard error, and…

Lack of reading fluency is a significant obstacle to children's ability to learn from text. In this study, we explored the effects of two practices used to scaffold fluency -- repeated reading of a passage and listening to a passage before reading it. Since the differences between these practices may be subtle, we employed eye tracking to measure…

At the conclusion of their study on home pregnancy test kits, Valinas and Perlman (1982) suggested that the instructions accompanying the kits be revised to make them easier to read. A study was undertaken to determine the readability of the printed instructions accompanying five home pregnancy test kits (Daisy II, Answer, Acu-Test, Predictor, and…

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…

Even though readability formulas are being used more widely than ever before in schools, libraries, businesses, newspapers, and government, there are critics who argue against their use. Criticism includes blaming the formulas for the "dumbing down" of textbooks, for being poor writers' guides, and for not taking into account the background or…

This paper reports the results of two studies of the readability of FORTRAN programs, i.e., the ease with which a programmer can read and analyze programs already written, particularly in the processes of maintenance and debugging. In the first study, low-level characteristics of 202 FORTRAN programs stored on the general-use UNIX systems at Bell…

The use of readability formulas is spreading into the courts and legislatures as one objective measure to protect the basic rights of citizens. Court cases and legislation involving the readability of Federal Government forms and correspondence, materials concerning criminal rights, consumer product labeling, ballot measures, and warranties and…

A new readability formula is designed to work on passages that are 40 to 99 words long, while existing readability formulas require a passage of 300 words or longer. The new formula requires the passage to have at least three sentences and is reliable for the fourth through the twelfth grades. (Four figures which demonstrate the use of the formula…