The Effects of Text Length on the Readability of Model Essays

John R. Baker

Abstract


Providing self-access libraries and the texts therein (anthologies of model essays) has long been cited as an essential part of university writing center services, as the reading of model essays has been found to positively affect the reading-writing relationship. When choosing such texts, readability is typically measured via quantitative readability formulae (e.g., the Lexile Readability Formula). However, this practice only measures two (i.e., semantic, syntactic) of the many features that influence readability, leaving others (e.g., text length) unexplored. To address this, this article reports the findings of an exploratory mixed-methods study conducted in an Asian university writing center setting which showed that the informants' ranking of ease and difficulty was significantly different than the Lexile Formula and that text length had a significant positive association with this ranking. It was further found that length was viewed as (a) a primary (i.e., an isolated feature), (b) a conjoined feature (i.e., comprising two or more associated entities where the second impacts the first: interest, vocabulary), and (c) a feature which impacts the influences of other features (interest, vocabulary, and vocabulary in context). The study also offers suggestions for writing studies professionals (teachers, writing center staff) and the publishing industry that text length be included in a hybrid (quantitative-qualitative) procedure when considering the difficulty of model essays found in anthologies.


Keywords


model essays; text length; anthologies; readability; Lexile

Full Text:

PDF

References


Allington, R. (2002). You can’t learn much from books you can’t read. Educational Leadership, 60(3), 16–19.

Ames, W. S. (1966). The development of a classification scheme of contextual aids. Reading Research Quarterly, 2(1), 57–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/747039

Auvenshine, A. (1978). A study of the readability of junior and community college textbooks used in the academic areas and the reading abilities of students using the textbooks (UMI No. 7820661). Ph.D thesis, University Microfilms International. Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses Database.

Bae, M. R. (2017). The effects of text length and question type on the reading comprehension test performance of Korean EFL readers. Ph.D thesis, Seoul National University.

Bae, M., & Lee, B. (2018). Effects of text length and question type on test-takers’ performance on fill-in-the-blank items in Korean CSAT. English Teaching, 73(4). https://doi.org/10.15858/engtea.73.4.201812.149

Baker, J. R. (2020). A checklist for use with the Lexile Readability Formula when choosing materials for writing center self-access libraries. The Asian ESP Journal, 16(6.1), 9-68.

Black, J. B., & Bern, H. (1981). Causal coherence and memory for events in narratives. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20(3), 267–275. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(81)90417-5

Black, J. B., & Bower, G. H. (1979). Episodes as chunks in narrative memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18(3), 309–318. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(79)90173-7

Buck, G., Tatsuoka, K., & Kostin, I. (1997). The subskills of reading: Rule-space analysis of a multiple-choice test of second language reading comprehension. Language Learning, 47(3), 423–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/0023-8333.00016

Calfee, R. C., & Curley, R. (1984). Structure of prose in the content areas. In J. Flood (Ed.), Understanding reading comprehension (pp. 161–180). International Reading Association.

Cha, K. A. (1995). The effect of text length in the diagnosis of reading comprehension. Journal of the Applied Linguistics Association of Korea, 8(1), 249–275. https://www.dbpia.co.kr/Journal/articleDetail?nodeId=NODE01852933

Cline, T. P. (1971). A comparison of the readability of community college textbooks with the reading ability of the students who use them (ED050730). ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050730.pdf

Commander, N. E., & Stanwyck, D. J. (1997). Illusion of knowing in adult readers: Effects of reading skill and passage length. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 22(1), 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1997.0925

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Cunningham, J. W., Hiebert, E. H., & Mesmer, H. A. (2018). Investigating the validity of two widely used quantitative text tools. Reading and Writing, 31(4), 813–833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9815-4

Daley, N., & Rawson, K. A. (2019). Elaborations in expository text impose a substantial time cost but do not enhance learning. Educational Psychology Review, 31(1), 197–222. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9451-9

Dalfonos, D. (2003). Grammy rewards. In T. Cooley (Ed.), The Norton sampler: Short essays for composition (pp. 206-208). New York: Norton & Company.

Dubay, W. (2007). Unlocking language: The classic readability studies. Impact Information.

Dunn, J. (1983). A comparative study: College freshman reading abilities and readabilities of required texts (UMI No. EP11518). Ph.D thesis, Kean University. Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses Database.

Earle, J. (1890). English prose: Its elements, history, and usage. Smith & Elder.

Erlandson, D. A., Harris, E. L., Skipper, B. L., & Allen, S. D. (1993). Doing naturalistic inquiry: A guide to methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Fox, D. L. (1978). The reading achievement levels of college freshman enrolled in selected course compared with the readability levels of textbooks in those assigned courses (UMI No. 7816608). Ph.D thesis, East Texas State University. Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses Database.

Freedle, R., & Kostin, I. (1993). The prediction of TOEFL reading item difficulty: Implications for construct validity. Language Testing, 10(2), 133–170. https://doi.org/10.1177/026553229301000203

Gerot, L., & Unsworth, L. (2000). Exploring reading processes. In L. Unsworth (Ed.), Researching language in schools and communities: Functional linguistic perspectives (pp. 204–221). London: Cassel.

Gopal, R., & Mahmud, C. T. (2019). Prose reading: The influence of text-reader factors. Studies in English Language and Education, 6(2), 187–198. https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v6i2.13367

Grabe, W., & Zhang, C. (2016). Reading-writing relationships in first and second language academic literacy development. Language Teaching, 49(3), 339–355. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444816000082

Gunning, T. G. (2003). The role of readability in today’s classrooms. Topics in Language Disorders, 23(3), 175–189.

Harris, S. (2001). Freedom and security. In G. Levin (Ed.), Prose models (pp. 389-392). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Hughes, L. Salvation (2012). In S. V. Buscemi, & C. Smith (Eds.), 75 readings plus (pp. 10–14). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Jalilehvand, M. (2012). The effects of text length and picture on reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students. Asian Social Science, 8(3), 329–337. https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v8n3p329

Kvale, S. (1996). Interviews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Lewis, H. (1894). The history of the English paragraph (UMI No. 301748991). Ph.D thesis, University of Chicago. Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses Database.

McDonald, C. P. (2003). A view from the bridge. In T. Cooley (Ed.), The Norton sampler: Short essays for composition (pp. 37–41). New York: Norton & Company.

Mehrpour, S., & Riazi, A. (2004). The impact of text length on reading comprehension in English as a second language. Asian EFL Journal, 3(6), 1–14. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/1085840

Merriam, S. B. (1991). Case study research in education: A qualitative approach. San Francisco: Jossey.

Moon, Y. S. (2019). Examining the effects of test characteristics on the difficulty of an EFL high-stakes reading comprehension test. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Seoul University.

Morrison, L. (1978). The relationship between the reading ability levels of freshman college students and the readability levels of required English textbooks (UMI No. 7909668). Ph.D thesis, East State Texas University. Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses Database.

North, S. M. (1984). The idea of a writing center. College English, 46(5), 433–446.doi:10.2307/377047

O’Hear, M., Ramsey, R., & Baden, W. (1992). Measuring human interest in first-year college writing textbooks. Reading Research and Instruction, 32(1), 64–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/19388079209558106

Reder, L. M., & Anderson, J. R. (1980). A comparison of texts and their summaries: Memorial consequences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19(2), 121–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(80)90122-X

Reder, L. M., Charney, H. M., & Morgan, K. I. (1986). The role of elaborations in learning a skill from an instructional text. Memory & Cognition, 14(1), 64–78. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209230

Rothkopf, E. Z. (1965). Some theoretical and experimental approaches to problems in written instruction. In J. Krumbolz (Ed.), Learning and the educational process (pp. 193–221). Rand McNally.

Rothkopf, E. Z., & Billington, M. J. (1983). Passage length and recall with test size held constant: Effects of modality, pacing, and learning set. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22(6), 667–681. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(83)90395-X

Saengsrichan, N., & Chaya, W. (2014). The effectiveness of noticing strategy instruction on developing Thai EFL students’ paragraph writing quality. UMT-POLY Journal, 11(2), 17–26. https://so06.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/umt-poly/article/view/29466/25329

Schriver, K. A. (1997). Dynamics in document design: Creating text for readers. New York: Wiley.

Scott, F. N., & Denny, J. (1895). Paragraph-writing. Allyn & Bacon: Boston.

Shariati, M., & Bordbar, A. (2011). Interrelationship among foreign language reading anxiety, reading proficiency and text feature awareness in the university context. Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies, 1(2), 179–206. https://doi.org/10.22111/IJALS.2011.57

Shokouhi, H., & Askari, S. (2010). The effect of guessing vocabulary in reading authentic texts among pre-university students. Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, 17, 75–89. http://slat.arizona.edu/arizona-working-papers-second-language-acquisition-teaching

Summerfield, J. (1988). Writing centers: A long view. The Writing Center Journal, 8(2), 3–9. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43441860

Traig, J. (2010). A guide to proper hand-washing technique. In M. L. Conlin (Ed.), Patterns plus: A short prose reader with argumentation (pp. 176–178). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/gema-2023-2301-04

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


 

 

 

eISSN : 2550-2131

ISSN : 1675-8021