Success Stories

Readability and Reading Ability

In the last issue of Literacy Links (April 2006, p.11), TCALL proudly announced the publication of Spreading the Success, a collection of stories written by Texas adult learners. These stories were previously published in our Literacy Links “Success Stories” issues from 2003-2005. We heard so many examples from teachers across Texas about how they were using the success stories in their classrooms that we have chosen to make this resource more widely available.

Spreading the Success is intended for instructional use in reading and writing activities; however, the stories can also support conversations about goal setting and can motivate students to persist in reaching those goals. TCALL has also provided a companion Teachers’ Guide which offers teaching strategies and activities for using Spreading the Success with Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced students. Both of these publications are available at no charge to Texas adult educators.

Each story in the Spreading the Success compilation has the grade-level Fry Readability measure and the newer Lexile Framework for Reading measure of text readability printed at the beginning of each story. What do these “readability measures” actually measure? What do they actually tell us? How should they be used? Can teachers use this information to improve classroom instruction and student progress?

Over 40 different readability measures have been developed over the last 70 years for a variety of purposes. The Gunning-Fog index, for example, is used for insurance, business, and health care publications. The FORCAST¹ measure estimates readability for questionnaires, forms, and other documents that do not use complete sentences. Textbook publishers use a variety of readability measures for targeting specific reading levels in their textbook series. A few measures designed for beginning readers, such as the Dale-Chall and the Spache, are vocabulary-based. Dale-Chall factors in the percentage of “difficult words,” those not included in the 3,000 Dale Familiar Words list.

The Fry Readability measure, which TCALL used in Spreading the Success, is one of the best known. Dr. Edward Fry developed his text Readability Graph as a Fullbright scholar during the 1960s while helping teachers in Uganda teach English as a second language. When he returned to Rutgers University he worked to refine its validity and extended the range of the measure from first grade through college. This measure examines average sentence length and average number of syllables per word. The two measures are plotted on the Fry Readability Graph to find the readability level.

The other readability measure used in Spreading the Success is the recently developed Lexile measure. The Lexile Framework for Reading is now gaining wide acceptance by educators and publishers across the country. You can recognize Lexile measures by the 3 or 4 digit number followed by a capital “L” as in “1140L.” Many of the standard assessments of reading comprehension as well as many statewide assessment tests are now also reporting reading comprehension scores in Lexiles. This allows us to use a common scale to compare student progress. In 2004, the Texas Education Agency announced that the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test results would be linked to Lexile measures. Currently, over 450 publishers are printing the Lexile measure of text difficulty on their books.

The developers of the Lexile measure intended to create a universal and reliable standard for scientifically and objectively measuring both the readability level of the text and the reading comprehension level of the student. The same Lexile scale is used to report measures of a student’s reading performance and a text’s reading difficulty. Scores from the many assessment tests can be calibrated to the Lexile scale making it possible to obtain scores from a variety of reading assessments. For more detailed information and resources on The Lexile Framework go to www.lexile.com and click the tab “What Does My Lexile Measure Mean;” linking to their “FAQ” page.

The Lexile measure differs from other measures because it examines word frequency (their comparison database contains 600 million words) in addition to the sentence length. Also, the Lexile measure examines the entire text rather than samples of the text; today’s fast computing makes this new kind of measurement possible. The Lexile Framework is well on the way to becoming the standard for reading measurement.

But none of the readability measures account for whether the prose is well written and coherent or whether it is incoherent and a confusing mess. What do the measures actually tell us? How should educators use them?

Reading improvement systems such as The Lexile Framework or Accelerated Reader or developmental products by Scholastic and others attempt to match the reader’s ability with the reading difficulty of the text to maximize reading development. The idea is to have students read materials that are not so difficult that they cause frustration but challenging enough to build vocabulary and comprehension skills. The Lexile scales are calibrated to match reader with text at 75% comprehension.

However, teachers should always keep in mind that a student’s reading score is a measurement of the student’s comprehension on that day of the reading passage used in the exam. Much about the student is not reflected in the score. A student’s literacy experiences, knowledge of the subject matter, vocabulary, and motivation can shift their reading level depending on the text.

As adult educators, we know from the results of the Adult Reading Component Study (ARCS) conducted by The National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) that one simple reading comprehension measure does not tell the whole story. (You can download the Research Brief of the ARCS at http://www.ncsall.net) Students with the same comprehension score can differ tremendously when the subskills or “reading components” are examined. The components include word recognition skills, spelling, word meaning, silent reading comprehension, and oral reading rate. For all the resources needed to develop and analyze reading profiles for ABE and ESL students go to http://www.nifl.gov/readingprofiles/

“Real readers” read for a variety of purposes and have widely varying interests. When students pursue personal reading interests, they can develop a love of reading. Librarians see danger in taking away a reader’s choice or restricting their choices to narrow readability levels (Carter, 2000). Some argue that students only need plenty of quality reading materials and time to read; they feel many of the reading “programs” are a waste of funds that should be used to expand library collections and make reading materials easily available to all students (Krashen, 2001).

However, teachers can use information about the readability of the text and students’ reading ability with assigned reading in the classroom. If a teacher knows the level of the reading required in a particular assignment and the reading ability of each student, the teacher can decide how much and what kind of support a student may need to successfully complete the assignment. Providing background information and building assignment related vocabulary or providing ancillary resources can help improve comprehension. Students can be assigned to work together in pairs or triads to understand difficult reading passages as a team, making use of dictionaries and other classroom resources.

All of us at TCALL hope that you will enjoy using Spreading the Success in your classroom. I also hope that you can take some time to explore the Reading Profiles website maintained by the National Institute for Literacy if you have not done so already. The Reading Profiles site has a Mini-Course on the Components of Reading as well as resources for creating and analyzing reading profiles for ABE and ESL students. It can help you understand how to give students the lessons they need to make progress.

Carter, B. (2000). Formula for failure. School Library Journal, July 1, 2001.

Krashen, S. (2001). The Lexile Framework: Unnecessary and potentially harmful. California School Library Association Journal 24(2): 25-26, 2001.

¹The FORCAST readability formula is tailored to job-related reading and was developed in the early 1970s.  It was a training research project by an outside company (Human Resources Research Organization: Alexandria, Virginia) under contract to the U. S. Army.  The subjects for the research were Vietnam draftees entering basic training and job-specific training. The name was created out of the names of some of the principle researchers who developed it.   FORCAST =  J. Patrick Ford,  John S. Caylor, and Thomas G. Sticht