The Readability Graph Validated at Primary Levels.
Edward Fry · The Reading Teacher · 1969
this article is concerned with judging readability of books or articles for children at the lower elementary levels. More specifi cally it reports some comparisons of a Readability Graph grade level scores with scores and ranking obtained on the Spache Readability Formula, an oral cloze technique, and errors made by children while reading the passages orally. A report on the validity of the upper range of the Readability Graph appeared in The Journal of Reading (Fry, 1968). In that article the Readability Graph was compared with readability scores obtained by using the Dale-Chall, Botel, Flesch, and SRA formulas, and a set of comprehension scores of tenth graders. This article reports grade level scores, or ranking, for seven books in the pri mary range. Rank order correlations are reported between the Readability Graph and the Spache formula, an oral cloze technique, and errors in oral reading of the words. The rationale for one readability formula is based on simplicity. The author feels that the Readability Graph is both sim ple and fast. Indeed it is often lack of simplicity that has kept other readability formulas from more widespread use. The cloze technique is a procedure in which words are omitted (blanked out). In this report approximately every fifteenth word was blanked out. The student was then asked to read the passage orally and fill in the blanks with the missing words. Thirty second and third grade pupils all read the same set of passages and then the passages on which the most errors were made were judged the hardest. Considerable research has shown that this is a good meas ure of readability. Readers interested in further information on the cloze technique should read Taylor (1953), Rankin (1965), Bor muth (1963), Coleman (1966), and Gallant (1965). The Spache Readability Formula is perhaps the best known primary level readability formula. It has a range from about 1.5 to fourth grade. It is based on comparing each word in a 100 word passage against a revision of the Dale list of 769 easy words and evaluating sentence length (Spache 1966).