The Common Core has emphasized reading for comprehension, including making inferences. However, little is known about the textual demands found within assessment and instructional passages that are promoted as being in line with Common Core expectations. The purpose of this content analysis was to identify the readability levels, passage length,…

An individualized education program is a legal document that details information regarding the special education program of a student with a disability. For parents to determine whether they agree with the individualized education program that is proposed by the school, they must first be able to read and comprehend the document. This study aimed…

This paper considers whether the sources of linguistic complexity presented within texts targeted at 1st-grade readers have increased, decreased, or held steady over the 52-year period from 1962 to 2013. A collection of more than 450 texts is examined. All texts were selected from Grade 1 textbooks published by Scott Foresman during the targeted…

As the world told becomes the world shown, the texts of the 21st century will require teachers to adopt new skills, strategies, and pedagogical frameworks to support students' transactions with multimodal texts. This shift from a focus on monomodal, print-based texts to a focus on the skills necessary for producing and consuming multimodal texts…

The readability of technical writing, and technical manuals in particular, especially for second language readers, can be noticeably improved by pairing Theme with Given and Rheme with New. This allows for faster processing of text and easier access to the "method of development" of the text. Typical Theme-Rheme patterns are described, and the…

Evaluates four middle school geography textbooks to examine readability levels, knowledge forms, intellectual operations, instructional objectives, and activities associated with before-, during-, and after-phases of instruction. Finds the texts to be generally inconsiderate of poor readers and to be dense with factual information. Discusses…

A study compared six midwestern United States campus newspapers with their respective general circulation newspapers. A content analysis of these publications was designed to determine whether local news stories in daily student newspapers are as readable, interesting, and thorough as those found in general circulation daily newspapers. The daily…

Explains eight categories of friendly text features: text organization, signaling, discourse consistency, cohesion, explication, conceptual density, metadiscourse, and instructional devices. Extratext determinants of readability (reader, goal, teacher) are also examined. Within the context of two models of reading, the interaction of these…

Some factors that should be considered when science teachers produce materials for their students are presented. Readability and the key aspects of language (vocabulary, sentence structure, textbook or examination style, and organization and presentation) are discussed. Directions and the graph needed for estimating the reading level of materials…

Evaluates four commercial reading programs at the second, fourth, and sixth grade levels with respect to main idea instructional practices and readability of text. Evaluates the type of main idea tasks and main idea statements, as well as placement of explicit main idea statements in the text. Discusses implications for practitioners meeting…