Editing Readability (section)

=== Reading ease ===

The earliest reading ease assessment is the subjective judgment termed '''text leveling'''.  Formulas do not fully address the various content, purpose, design, visual input, and organization of a text.<ref name="Clay">Clay, M. 1991. ''Becoming literate: The construction of inner control.''  Portsmouth, NH: Heinneman.</ref><ref name="frylevel">Fry, E. B. 2002. "Text readability versus leveling." ''Reading Teacher'' 56 no. 23:286–292.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Crossley |first1=S |last2=Heintz |first2=A |last3=Choi |first3=J |last4=Batchler |first4=J |last5=Karimi |first5=M |last6=Malatinszky |first6=A |date=2023 |title=A large-scaled corpus for assessing text readability |journal=Behavior Research Methods |volume=55 |issue=2 |pages=491–507|doi=10.3758/s13428-022-01802-x |pmid=35297016 |pmc=10027808 }}</ref> Text leveling is commonly used to rank the reading ease of texts in areas where reading difficulties are easy to identify, such as books for young children. At higher levels, ranking reading ease becomes more difficult, as individual difficulties become harder to identify. This has led to better ways to assess reading ease.

In the 1920s, the scientific movement in education looked for tests to measure students' achievement to aid in curriculum development. Teachers and educators had long known that, to improve reading skill, readers—especially beginning readers—need reading material that closely matches their ability. University-based psychologists did much of the early research, which was later taken up by textbook publishers.<ref name="fry">Fry, Edward B. 2006. "Readability." ''Reading Hall of Fame Book.'' Newark, DE: International Reading Assn.</ref> In 1921, Harry D. Kitson published ''The Mind of the Buyer'', one of the first books to apply psychology to marketing. Kitson's work showed that each type of reader bought and read their own type of text. On reading two newspapers and two magazines, he found that short sentence length and short [[word length]] were the best contributors to reading ease.<ref name="Kitson">Kitson, Harry D. 1921. ''The Mind of the Buyer.'' New York: Macmillan.</ref>

In 1923, Bertha A. Lively and [[Sidney L. Pressey]] published the first reading ease formula. They were concerned that junior high school science textbooks had so many technical words and that teachers would spend all class time explaining these words. They argued that their formula would help to measure and reduce the "vocabulary burden" of textbooks. Their formula used five variable inputs and six constants. For each thousand words, it counted the number of unique words, the number of words not on the Thorndike list, and the median index number of the words found on the list. Manually, it took three hours to apply the formula to a book.<ref name="Lively">Lively, Bertha A. and S. L. Pressey. 1923. "A method for measuring the 'vocabulary burden' of textbooks. ''Educational administration and supervision'' 9:389–398.</ref>

After the Lively–Pressey study, people looked for formulas that were more accurate and easier to apply. In 1928, Carleton Washburne and Mabel Vogel created the first modern readability formula. They validated it by using an outside criterion, and correlated .845 with test scores of students who read and liked the criterion books.<ref name="DuBay2">[https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED506404.pdf The Classic Readability Studies, William H. DuBay, Editor (chapter on Washburne, C. i M. Vogel. 1928).]</ref> It was also the first to introduce the variable of interest to the concept of readability.<ref name="Washburne">Washburne, C. and M. Vogel. 1928. "An objective method of determining grade placement of children's reading material. ''Elementary school journal'' 28:373–81.</ref>

Between 1929 and 1939, Alfred Lewerenz of the Los Angeles School District published several new formulas.<ref name="Lewerenz1929a">Lewerenz, A. S.  1929. "Measurement of the difficulty of reading materials." ''Los Angeles educational research bulletin'' 8:11–16.</ref><ref name="Lewerenz1929b">Lewerenz, A. S. 1929. "Objective measurement of diverse types of reading material. ''Los Angeles educational research bulletin'' 9:8–11.</ref><ref name="Lewerenz1930">Lewerenz, A. S.  1930. "Vocabulary grade placement of typical newspaper content." ''Los Angeles educational research bulletin'' 10:4–6.</ref><ref name="Lewerenz1935">Lewerenz, A. S.  1935. "A vocabulary grade placement formula." ''Journal of experimental education'' 3: 236</ref><ref name="Lewerenz1939">Lewerenz, A. S. 1939. "Selection of reading materials by pupil ability and interest." ''Elementary English review'' 16:151–156.</ref>

In 1934, educational psychologist [[Edward Thorndike]] of Columbia University noted that, in Russia and Germany, teachers used word frequency counts to match books to students. Word skill was the best sign of intellectual development, and the strongest predictor of reading ease. In 1921, Thorndike published ''Teachers Word Book'', which contained the [[word frequency|frequencies]] of 10,000 words.<ref>Thorndike E.L. 1921 ''The teacher's word book''. 1932 ''A teacher's word book of the twenty thousand words found most frequently and widely in general reading for children and young people''. 1944 (with J.E. Lorge) ''The teacher's word book of 30,000 words''.</ref> He also published his readability formula. He wrote that word skills can be increased if the teacher introduces new words and repeats them often.<ref name="Thorn2">Thorndike, E. 1934. "Improving the ability to read." ''Teachers college record'' 36:1–19, 123–44, 229–41. October, November, December.</ref> In 1939, W.W. Patty and W. I Painter published a formula for measuring the vocabulary burden of textbooks. This was the last of the early formulas that used the Thorndike vocabulary-frequency list.<ref name="Patty">Patty. W. W. and W. I. Painter. 1931. "A technique for measuring the vocabulary burden of textbooks." ''Journal of educational research'' 24:127–134.</ref> Until computers came along, word frequency lists were the best aids for grading reading ease of texts.<ref name="KlareBuck3">Klare, G. R. and B. Buck. 1954. ''Know Your Reader: The scientific approach to readability.'' New York: Heritage House.</ref>

In 1981 the World Book Encyclopedia listed the grade levels of 44,000 words.<ref name="livingword">Dale, E. and J. O'Rourke. 1981. ''The living word vocabulary: A national vocabulary inventory.'' World Book-Childcraft International.</ref> A popular strategy amongst educators in modern times is "incidental vocabulary learning," which enforces efficiency in learning vocabulary in the short-term rather than drilling words and meanings teachers hope will stick.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=He |first=Shumin 1 1 Country Garden Experimental School |date=2023 |title=Exploration of Incidental Vocabulary Learning Strategies from Different Modes to Acquire Vocabulary |journal=The Educational Review |volume=7 |issue=7 |language=English |pages=927–932 |doi=10.26855/er.2023.07.014|id={{ProQuest|2866467078}} |doi-access=free }}</ref> The incidental learning tactic is meant to help learners build comprehension and learning skills rather than memorizing words. Through this strategy, students would hopefully be able to navigate various levels of readability using context clues and comprehension.