Readability : text and context

This book explores what makes a book readable by bringing together the relevant literature and theories, and situating them within a unified account. It provides a single resource that offers a principled discussion of the issues and their applications. Cover -1 Contents 6 Preface 9 About the Authors 11 1 Introduction to a New Approach to Readability 12 Evidence 13 Some basic concepts 15 Linking 16 Ambiguity 16 Contextual (background) knowledge 17 The chapters: an outline 18 2 Readability Formulas 21 Historical background 21 Early attempts to measure readability 26 Thorndike: the precursor 26 Lively and Pressey: “A Method for Measuring ‘Vocabulary Burden’” 29 Vogel and Washburne: “an objective method” 31 Adults’ reading material 36 Dale and Tyler: adults with limited reading ability 37 Gray and Leary: what makes a book readable 40 Lorge and benchmarks 44 Classic readability formulas 45 Flesch and readable style 46 The Dale-Chall formulas 50 Gunning Fog 52 Fry’s Readability Graph 53 McLaughlin’s SMOG 55 Other approaches to readability 57 The cloze procedure 57 Coh-Metrix 59 Readability formulas: a critique 64 The increment issue 64 The variables issue 65 The text simplification issue 69 Conclusions 73 Beyond formulas: how do we proceed? 74 3 Grammar and Readability 76 Syntactic complexity 76 Syntactic ambiguity 92 Standard syntactic ambiguity 92 Down the garden path 96 Ambiguity and context 100 Morphology and linking 103 Chapter summary and concluding remarks 105 4 Meaning in Words and Sentences 108 Assessing vocabulary difficulty: word lists and word length 108 Knowledge, vocabulary, and readability 112 Morphological and other background knowledge 116 Words and contexts 119 Word meaning and contextual knowledge 122 Semantic ambiguity 127 The nature of reference 129 Vagueness and reference 131 Ambiguity and reference 137 Summary and conclusions 138 5 Coherence and Discourse 142 What is coherence? 143 Conceptual linking and repetition 143 Background knowledge and assumptions 144 Genre 154 The effects of genre on readability 158 Frames and scripts 162 Domains 166 Connectives 169 Coherence and metaphor 172 Varieties of metaphor 173 Comprehension, fluency, and coherence 176 Summary and conclusions 184 6 Towards a Theory of Readability 188 Text and context 1: background knowledge and assumptions 189 Text and context 2: the linguistic code 192 Text and context 3: the organization of the text 195 Text and context 4: synergistic effects 196 The practicality argument 199 Readability and education 200 Readability and writing to communicate 205 A theory of readability 208 Notes 215 Bibliography 216 Index 230 "What makes a text readable? Although there are many studies concerned with readability from various perspectives, there have been no recent attempts to consider the field more generally, as an area of scholarly research as well as one that has practical significance. This book brings together the relevant literature and theories, and situates them within a unified account. Beginning with an historical treatment of the concept of readability and readability formulas, it goes on to discuss recent research on the subject from the perspectives of many fields, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and text linguistics. The book will be invaluable to both scholars and practitioners who seek a single resource offering a comprehensive, principled discussion of the issues"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction to a New Approach to Readability....Pages 1-9 Readability Formulas....Pages 10-64 Grammar and Readability....Pages 65-96 Meaning in Words and Sentences....Pages 97-130 Coherence and Discourse....Pages 131-176 Towards a Theory of Readability....Pages 177-204 Back Matter....Pages 205-224