The article talks about two types of procedures that teachers use to select books for readers and different stages; readability and leveling. Teachers know that introducing reading material that is appropriate for the grade level is an important part of the reading process. Readability formulas usually give a numerical score to rank books or other reading matter in an order of difficulty. Leveling, on the other hand, also yields a score of difficulty, but it is less objective and takes into account some subjective factors of judgment.
William Holmes McGuffey developed the first widely used "leveled" set of readers in 1836, using a numerical ranking instead of grade level designations. Most traditional readability formulas are based on two measures: syntax difficulty (grammatical complexity) usually measured by sentence length and semantic difficulty (meaning or word meaning) usually measured in syllables or number of letters. Leveling, however, is less objective and takes a number of "text support" factors into consideration such as; content, illustration, length, curriculum, language structure, judgment and format.
Readability formulas can be bad because they do not take into account motivation and appropriateness. There are many students that read on a level below their grade and when a student cannot understand what they are reading, they most likely will not read it. Readability formulas do not take into account factors inside the reader's head and tend to be text based. Leveling tries to compensate for part of this limitaion. Leveling is not used outside the classroom while readabilty is used in both. Readability has the strength of objectivity and consistency that any person or computer will get the same score. Leveling has the strength of taking more factors into account than traditional readability formulas and usually provides finer gradations at the primary levels. Both those in the field of readability and leveling are trying to help classroom teachers to teach reading better by helping them select books for their students.
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17 comments:
I think when selecting books, I would want the approach that accounts for most information. although I believe it is important to determine the difficulty level of reading a book, I believe it is more important to figure out what reading level my students are on before I assign them a book. Then I can determine whether I should assign a book that is either at their reading level or slightly above. If I have a book that is rated difficult to read based solely on its readability then I ma y not assign it to students. However, If I realize that my students are at an advance reading level...then it would probably be appropriate for my students.
This article made me think of the reading systems placed in the school systsem of my hometown. Like in most schools the students take a test to determine what level of books they should be reading. However, there are so many factors that the tests are unable to detect or survey. I beleive that these tests need to be paired with teacher's input. Instead, the current system I am refferring to leaves the teacher with no say as to what level a child is reading at. The teacher can evaluate a student's needs in other ways than a test. It seems that a combination of the two would make for a better system.
I think that readability/leveling test are a bunch of crap. I think teachers will definitely know when a text is inappropriately difficult for the classroom level that they are teaching. Furthermore, I believe that once students have become juniors in high school, there is no text that is too difficult. The dictionary, and the OED are tools that will help break down the meaning of words. Classroom discussions will help yeild an approximation of the students understanding the text and, therefore, guide discussions. Just becuase a word has many syllables does not mean that it is too difficult. James Baldwin hardly ever uses long syllable words, however, it does not make his text any less difficult. Readability and leveling should not mean much once students are immersed in a particular subject.
I am always wary of ideals that correlate computer functions with standards in our ability to learn. By limiting the scope of readibiblity to such objective standars, I think it overlooks many more important factors playing roles in reading levels and performance. Leveling, on the other hand, seems to a have more realistic, abliet less strucured or standardized. It does however take into account aspects of learning in relation to reading that i can remember being important to me like: judgement, illustrations, and length.
In grade school, I would definitely use leveling instead of readability.
Leveling takes more information into account than readability does and I think it is more appropriate at the grade school level. Context is very important at lower levels. You obviously do not students reading inappropriate material even if it does have a lower readability. I also think it is best to have a large range of reading level books available for students though, some students are gonna be at different reading levels and you need to have material for each student.
This article was very interesting. I never really knew how to determine my readability till reading this article or doing the in class assignment. I believe it is important to know and understand your reading level. If you have a low reading level then perhaps you need to work more on your reading and writing abilities. It will be very usefull to know the readability of books so that you don't assign one to your students that is too difficult. Leveling is a great tool to use as well. When you can't use readability to decide if the book is right or not then it is best to use leveling. I think they will both be very helpful to teachers when it comes to deciding if a book is too difficult or not as well as to see what level their students are at.
It was pretty interesting to see the level at which I write. I do have very distinct levels that I write at depending on the subject or audience. But this is not as helpful as I had hoped it would be. It is useful as long as it is not used to stigmatize those who write at a lower level. It doesn't really take literary style into account. Writing a short sentence every now and then really brings your level down. I guess that that makes sense but there should be a better way to judge writting level.
Bryan Norbut
I found it very interesting to see the level at which I write. However, I feel that a simple count of words and syllables gives an incomplete assessment of one's "readability" in their writing.
I thought that the readability test was lacking. In many schools they try to suppress students by not letting them branch out and read something that may interest them. Most often they pick books from one or two genres that suck and may not interest the whole class. Also if a student does want to branch out and read harder material they are encouraged not to because it is not 'up to their level'. I believe that student should be given a chance to read what they want to read because when students develop a love of reading they are more likely to read when they become older and this increases cognitive skills and will enhance their language comprehension. I also I agree with Von that they students can easily pull out a dictionary. I often find myself reading a book and stumbling across a new word that I have to look up. There is no shame in that and I highly encourage everyone to do so.
I agree with amurphy In selecting books it would be more accurate to use a leveling approach that includes more factors of information in the "leveling." As a grade school student my school used the accelerated reader program and they told us what "grade levels" we could read at and then we selected books in those specific levels. I wonder now which "approach" they used to find these grade levels. I liked the accelerated reader program because it gave the students a chance to read what they enjoyed instead of assigned texts.
I have to agree with what a lot of people have all ready said. I just don't really see how the Fry graph truly determined our writing ability. It certainly did not take into account grammatical errors, sophistication of word choice or any other detail that makes up writing level. I suppose that someone who used run on sentences would be considered quite high in Fry's readabilty graph, but a reader can't understand a sentence that goes on for a half of a page! Therefore, I think it should be entirely left up to the teacher to decide what is appropriate for his/her students to read.
After reading this summary and doing the in-class assignment, I am somewhat confused about this whole thing. I am not sure that the method that we used to determine our own readability was very effective because we only used three different texts. Two of which were very informal. As for finding out what your students can read, I think a big part is getting to know the students and trying to adjust to their own individual needs. I think it really depends on the students and I am not sure a test or a form can determine what a child can read and understand.
I think it is important to know our reading level. But it is good to have various level of books available to students.
I believe that teachers should be knowledgable of appropiate books for their grade level. Tecahers can look on-line to find book lists which shows the grade-level of certain books.
I hate the idea of making kids read books that are his or her "level." I like to read and often times I read books that are under my reading level because I like the content.
I too am weary of people coming up with numbers which determine a persons ability to learn. I think that it depends on the person and that it is hard to make a standard for coming up with reading "levels". Teachers need to get to know their students and figure it out.
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