This project sought to find a rigorous and manageable method for measuring the difficulty of texts in te reo Māori written for children, beyond junior reading material in Māori-medium educational settings. The project examined a range of readability measures based on semantic and/or syntactic features of text, following the work of Warwick Elley (1969) and Richard Benton et al. (1995). Features such as the difficulty of content words, average sentence length, standardised type:token ratios and the use of function words were used in different combinations to create seven methods to measure text difficulty. Teachers’ and students’ ratings of text difficulty, and students’ scores on reading comprehension tasks related to the texts were used as criteria to examine the validity of the readability methods. The findings revealed that indices of either vocabulary load or lexical density when used in combination with the number of function types in the text, produce statistical significance with the criterion measures. Further research is needed to confirm their validity for use in Māori –medium classroom settings. The Māori word lists developed for this project as the basis of the readability approaches have the potential for more widespread analyses of language proficiency measures for students in Māori-medium settings.

The thesis entitled "Evaluation of didactic aspects of selected school textbooks" focuses on analysis, evaluation, comparison of didactic completeness, and text difficulty of selected biology textbooks. Beside of analyses of these evaluation criteria, the compliance of textbooks with Framework Educational Programme was proved. Furthermore, a survey among biology teachers was conducted to monitor the range of used textbooks on elementary schools and using of innovative technologies, such as electronic textbooks, in the educational process.

For decades, teachers and language learners have been concerned about matching the difficulty level of texts to the proficiency level of learners in order to achieve comprehensible input, which leads to effective learning. Some leveling systems and research use word lists as part of their leveling processes, particularly the Academic Word List. The Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) has not been explored yet as a leveling tool, so this study aims to address this lack of research by examining how the AVL words vary in cumulative frequency bands and also in separate frequency bands with regard to level and topic. The AVL was divided into 5 frequency bands and compared against corpora of biology and U.S. history texts at the elementary, junior high, high school, and university levels. Results showed that the biology texts had a higher percentage of total AVL tokens than the history texts did, suggesting that the AVL may be more suitable for some disciplines than others. For the cumulative bands, Bands 1 through 3 proved to have the highest percent deltas, suggesting that words 1 to 800 are the most useful to learn. Looking at each separate band, Bands 1 and 2 had the highest percent of AVL tokens at the high school level, implying that the words of these bands are especially valuable for learners at this level. The university level had the highest percentage for Bands 3 through 5. There was no statistical significance for any band concerning the factor of the relationship between topic and level, but there was statistical significance for the factor of proficiency level at every level. For the factor of topic, there was significance for every band except Band 3. For each band, the elementary and junior high texts were generally similar to each other concerning the AVL tokens found in them. High school and university texts were similar to each other for Bands 1 and 2 but were not similar to each other for Bands 3 through 5.

No description available.

abstract: How hard should the books be in elementary small-group reading? This study explored text difficulty for bilingual students reading below grade level in third grade. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods design, I used qualitative methods to analyze students’ engagement and discussion during small groups and single case design to evaluate students’ fluency and reading comprehension after reading and discussing texts in small groups. Six Spanish-English bilingual students, split into two groups of three, participated in twelve, 30-minute, small-group reading sessions. Students in Group 1 read approximately one year below grade level, and students in Group 2 read approximately a year and a half below grade level. In six of the twelve sessions, students read and discussed texts matched to their reading levels, and in the other six they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. I assigned matched and difficult texts across the twelve days by blocked randomization. I analyzed video transcripts of each session to understand students’ engagement (focus of engagement, strategies, and interaction) and discussion (inferential vs. literal responses, instances of verbal participation). At the end of each session, students reread and retold the book the group had read and discussed that day to produce a fluency (words correct per minute) and comprehension (ideas correctly retold) score. Findings were complex and revealed that different levels of texts have both advantages and drawbacks. Key findings included: For fluency, half of the students benefited from matched texts. The other half read difficult texts with similar fluency to matched texts. For comprehension, text difficulty did not matter for anyone except one student, and for him it only had an effect on 3 of 12 days. Group 2 engaged much more with texts and ideas in difficult books and with pictures in matched books. Group 1 had more inferential/interpretive responses with matched texts, and Group 2 had more inferential and interpretive responses with difficult texts. Most students participated evenly regardless of the difficulty of the text under discussion. However, two students talked more when discussing matched texts. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 2018

TITLE: Evaluation of the text difficulty of chemistry textbooks for secondary vocational schools AUTHOR: Lucie Vosyková DEPARTMENT: Katedra chemie a didaktiky chemie SUPERVISOR: PhDr. Martin Rusek, Ph.D. ABSTRACT: This thesis builds on previous researches of textbooks for primary, secondary and grammar schools and focuses on the analysis of the text difficulty of chemistry textbooks for secondary vocational schools of non-chemical focus. The aim of this work is to analyse the text difficulty of chemistry textbooks for non-chemical high schools, using the Nestlerova-Prucha-Pluskal method, to compare the text difficulty of chemistry textbooks for non-chemical high schools with primary and secondary school textbooks,and last but not least, to compare the text difficulty of particular chapters of choosen textbooks for primary and secondary schools. The results of the analysis are intended to provide teachers seeking support for their teaching with a possible criteria for a textbook selection. Based on the findings, the five analyzed series of textbooks can be divided into two groups. The first group consists of textbooks published by Scientia and Fortuna, whose text difficulty is at an appropriate level with a lower rate of technical terms. The other group consists of two textbooks published by SPN and...

1 Abstract: The main parameters describing content and the accessibility of information from textbooks are many aspects such as text difficulty and others. Individual characteristics of pupils - that are represented by chosen student preconceptions and misconceptions - also belong to key factors. The providing of the comprehensive view of the issues regarding analysis and the linking of acquired pieces of knowledge with the practical textbook creation have been the main aims of this dissertation. The creation of an instructional text follows the analysis results of the topic carbohydrates and their metabolism in chosen textbooks and the preconception analysis of biochemical terms. The instructional text respects the results of the analysis. The theoretical background of textbook creation (the functions of textbooks, their structure, content, characteristics and investigated parameters) has been described in detail in the theoretical part of this doctoral thesis. It is followed by the survey of the information concerning student preconceptions and the possibilities for their analysis and use in teaching. The aspects of textbooks use from the perspective of pupils, teachers and publishers, as well as the relation of the topic carbohydrates and their metabolism to curriculum documents have been described in...

本研究主要的目的是在探討年級、性別、文章程度對兒童摘取大意能力 (包括摘取大意過程與成果) 的影響，並對兒童在摘取大意過程與成果各 項工作上的答錯情形作錯誤分析，以作為教學上的參考o 摘取大意過程是 指找出文章中重覆的訊息，辨認文章的主題句及刪掉文章中的不重要訊息 。摘取大意成果是指寫出文章的大意。研究對象來自台北市四所國小及台 北縣二所國小四、六年級學生共720人o 研究結果敘述如下：一、兒童摘 取文章大意的能力，因年級不同而有顯著差異o 年級愈高，愈能正確完成 摘取大意過程與成果各項工作o二、兒童摘取文章大意的能力，不因性別 不同而有顯著差異o三、在摘取大意過程與成果各項工作上，四、六年級 學生犯錯類型相似，皆是不能分辨文章的主題句與支持主題句的細節o四 、本研究四年級程度文章的刪掉不重要訊息題目位置的安排可能並不適當 ，造成題目難度出了問題，因此不能測出學生刪掉不重要訊息的能力o 但 由學生在六年級、國中程度文章題目的作答仍可反應出年級的差別o 。 依據研究結果，本研究提出對大意教學上及未來研究上的建議o

The diploma thesis deals with the book genre Erstlesebuch (book for beginner readers) as educational material in the context of foreign language education at the levels of Basic Users (A0/1-A2). In the context of first language teaching, this specific genre belongs to the field of literature, the didactic of literature, and the didactic of reading. The goal of this diploma thesis is to present different possibilities of didactic activities with Erstlesebuch in the context of second language teaching and to formulate criteria for choosing an appropriate text. The theoretical part describes the context of foreign language education and the role of literature in this context, with consideration for the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The theoretical part also presents the specifics of the book genre Erstlesebuch itself. The empirical part of this thesis is based on several investigations: firstly on a complex analysis (readability and text structure) of six Erstlesebuch and secondly on empirical research in reading with schoolchildren at higher grades of an elementary school (children at the age of 13-15). These results are compared to the results of similar research done with Austrian beginner readers (children between the ages of 7 and 9). The final part of the thesis concludes...

The thesis provides an analysis and comparison of Geography textbooks for children with hearing impairment, children with a mild intellectual disability and children in mainstream elementary schools. The aim of the thesis is to highlight the current state of Geography textbooks for children with hearing impairment and, by means of combining findings on deaf education and the didactics of Geography, suggest specific solutions for improving the quality of education of children with hearing impairment through raising the standard for didactic materials used for teaching. The introduction of the thesis explores the position of Geography as a field of study within the School and Framework Educational Programmes; the objectives of teaching Geography at the second stage of elementary school are examined in relation to the target groups whose the textbooks are analysed in this thesis. Further, the thesis focuses directly on textbooks. The functions of the textbook in the educational process are introduced, as well as its structural components with a particular emphasis on the textual elements. Drawing on relevant academic literature, the characteristic features of these elements are described with special attention paid to learning from text - predominantly with regards to deaf children who typically...