Return-Path: <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h4JLDnC22336; Mon, 19 May 2003 17:13:49 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 17:13:49 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <799185F2.462CDDF4.0BDE6788@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: MarkH38514@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-HEALTH:3981] Re: Readability Testing X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Mailer: Atlas Mailer 2.0 Status: O Content-Length: 2431 Lines: 26 Readability formulas are often a matter of personal preference. Beware of the Flesch-Kincaid in Microsoft Word--it only scores up to grade 12. That's not the formula's fault--it's the fault of Microsoft programmers who converted the formula into a software program. It's a flaw that Microsoft has never acknowledged or fixed, even though several readability researchers have contacted Microsoft about it. I believe that any research relying on the Flesch-Kincaid in Microsoft Word--and there is a lot of it--may come to the wrong conclusions. Do not rely exclusively on readability formulas. They can be helpful, but don't try to "write to the formula" just to get a lower grade level. Evaluate materials using the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) developed by Doak, Doak, and Root in their 1996 book "Teaching Patients With Low Literacy Skills." Or consider using the cloze procedure to see how well people understand a document. The cloze involves deleting every fifth word, and asking readers to fill-in-the-blank. Sixty to 80% correct means that the document is OK, 40% - 60% correct means that the document needs better explanations, and 0% - 40% correct means that readers don't understand the document. It should be reviewed and rewritten. If you want to find out if people can understand a piece of writing, you have to test it on a representative sample of readers. Readability formulas will give you a rough estimate of how difficult the material is to understand, but the grade levels should not be taken too seriously. After all, some of these formulas were developed 30-60 years ago, and both reading skills and reading materials have changed. I don't know what it really means if something scores at a 10th grade reading level--based on 10th grade reading skills in the 1950s. I've used readability formulas extensively in my consulting, but I always recommend other ways of evaluating written materials. Plus, depending on what you're writing and who the audience is, I always look at things like the number of words in a document, average sentence length, word commonness, etc. as ways of giving my some ideas about information overload, working memory limits, cognitive complexity, etc. Mark Hochhauser For more information: Mark Hochhauser, Ph.D. Readability Consultant 3344 Scott Avenue North Golden Valley, MN 55422 Phone: (763) 521-4672 Fax: (763) 521-5069 E-mail: MarkH38514@aol.com
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