Community college remedial reading students composed an informational report from sources. Productivity, use of source text, reproductions, accuracy, and inclusion of key ideas were analyzed as a function of text density and domain (health, business), and prior knowledge and general literacy skill. Text density interacted with literacy skill for…

Twenty-two graduate students in education at a British university read, answered written questions, and then discussed four text extracts from different genres (literary, theoretical, research, and statistical). Results of this study and a follow-up survey of 39 similar students suggested that text genre is a major factor in perceived difficulty…