This study sought to determine: 1. To what extent teachers who possess theoretical and situational knowledge of elementary reading instruction are accurate in estimating the readability levels of materials. 2. To what extent teachers who possess theoretical and situational knowledge of elementary reading instruction are more accurate in estimating the readability levels of materials than a) in-service teachers who possess only situational knowledge of reading from teaching experience? b) pre-service teachers who possess only theoretical knowledge of elementary reading instruction? c) pre-service teachers who possess neither theoretical knowledge of elementary reading instruction nor situational knowledge of reading from teaching experience? Data were collected from 72 subjects who were enrolled in undergraduate classes in the Faculty of Education at The University of British Columbia and who were categorized, in groups of 18, with respect to pre-service or in-service preparation in elementary reading instruction as well as classroom teaching experience at this level. The results indicated that teachers who possessed theoretical and situational knowledge of reading were not more accurate than other teachers in estimating the readability levels of the selected passages, and that the accuracy with which teachers in all groups, estimated the readability levels of passages decreased as the readability levels of the passages increased. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

No description available.

This study examined the readability of fonts. More specifically, it investigated how four different fonts effected both reading rate and reading comprehension. The typefaces Georgia, Verdana, (which, according to their designers, optimize onscreen readability) Times, and Arial (both designed for digital output to hard copy) were displayed as treatments both on a computer screen and on paper. The purpose of the study was to determine whether sans serif and serif typefaces optimized for on-screen viewing significantly improve reading rate and reading comprehension. Comparisons were made among the typefaces using a categorical independent variable postmeasure-only research design to determine the level of dependent variables (rate, comprehension). The group means of each of twelve treatment groups (N=264) were analyzed using analyses of variance to determine if either of the variables (presentation mode or font) had a statistically significant effect upon reading rate and/or reading comprehension of a sample taken from a population of subjects attending a midwestern state university. No significant difference was found among reading speed or reading comprehension scores of subjects tested who read text which was typeset in any of the four typefaces. However, significant difference was found between the presentation modes used in the experiment. Since it was found that 8-bit on-screen text was not significanly more readable than 600dpi text on paper, and 1-bit onscreen text was found to be significantly less readable than onscreen text and 600dpi text on paper, this research concludes that for purposes of ease of readability, onscreen text is better suited to be rendered as 8-bit onscreen text than 1-bit on-screen text. Also, the findings indicate that 8-bit on-screen text was not found to be significantly less readable than 600dpi text on paper. Also, due to the various typefaces currently being used in digital typography and the differing presentation media, further exploration of the readability of on-screen text should examine more fonts and screen display variables. / Ph. D.

No description available.

This study was designed to investigate the relationship of eye movements of grade five pupils to variations in readability levels. A further purpose was to assess the effects of these variations on the eye movements of pupils of poor, average, and good reading ability. Twenty pupils were selected at random for each of three groupings of poor, average, and good readers from a total of 213 grade five students. Each subject's independent, instructional, and frustration level was determined using the Botel Reading Inventory A. Eye movements were recorded for each subject at each of the three levels using E.D.L's Biometric Reading Eye II and passages from the Reading Eye Test Selections. Number of fixations and regression, average duration of fixation, average reading rate, and comprehension percentage were computed for each recording. Analysis of variance was used to determine the significance of both inter-group and intra-group variations and post-hoc comparisons were made using Student Newman-Keuls test. The fiver per cent level of significance was set as the acceptable level for significant difference. Analysis of the results revealed significant differences between poor, average, and good readers in the number of fixations, regressions, average span of recognition, and average reading rate when reading at their independent, instructional, and frustration levels. Poor readers also exhibited a significantly longer average duration of fixation than either average or good readers at their independent, instructional, and frustration levels but no significant difference in average duration of fixation was found between average and good readers at these levels. No significant differences were found in the number of fixations, number of regressions, and average span of recognition of grade five students reading at their independent or instructional levels. Significant differences were found in all eye movement components, number of fixations, number of number of regressions, average span of recognition, average duration of fixation, and average reading rate, of grade five students reading at their independent or frustration levels. Graphs of the mean values for the eye movements of average and good readers indicated a linear trend from independent to instructional to frustration levels for average span of recognition and average duration of fixation. The performance of poor readers for average span of recognition and average duration of fixation did not follow the same pattern as that for average and good readers but, rather, suggested a significant relationship between appropriateness of material (instructional level) and eye movement behavior which warrants further investigation. Further support for this relationship was provided by the superior performance of poor and average readers in terms of the number of fixations and regressions exhibited at their instructional level as opposed to the independent or frustration levels. / 1976

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1957. / Typescript. Abstracted in Dissertation abstracts, v. 17 (1957) no. 10, p. 2257. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-116).

A readability survey was carried out on a wide selection of history books, using a computer program, ASTRA 3, developed for the study. The results showed that although the mean readability levels of textbooks provided for 12-14 year olds were appropriate to their readership, there were very large and seemingly random internal fluctuations. This, coupled with an observed lack of scalar correspondence between formulae, has implications for current practices in readability assessment. The responses of readers to readability fluctuations were next investigated, using one subjective measure and three behavioural measures, namely, children's subjective ratings, cloze procedure, reading rate, and stress reaction (Skin Conductance Response). Relatively low cost microcomputer based apparatus was developed for studying the latter two measures. It was found that average 12-14 year old readers were able to perceive variation in difficulty in adjacent passages and these subjective ratings proved to be relatively good predictors of fluctuations in cloze procedure scores. A measure of redundancy based on cloze responses was also shown to be strongly related to children's subjective ratings of contextualised passages. No statistical relationship was found, however, between textual cohesion and either the subjective or the objective indices. These findings raise a number of questions of concern to writers and publishers of school text books. According to the cloze test, all the passages were at frustration level, although this is contrary to what would have been expected from the range of readability indices. Reading rate tended to increase, rather than decrease with difficulty, though in absolute terms the variation was slight. SCR responses tended to be labile and snowed substantial individual. differences. This part of the study opens up a number of questions about the appropriateness of different ways of examining the response of readers to specific 'text features that contribute to readability. In general, the findings in this interrelated series of studies show that a great deal of readability assessment is based on assumptions of dubious validity concerning the distribution of difficulty within texts, the nature of relationships between different readability measures, and the ways in which readers actually respond to hypothesized difficulties.

No description available.