The Readability Graph and Informal Reading Inventories.
George H. Maginnis · The Reading Teacher · 1969
recently the members of a graduate class in Reading applied a readability formula to ten different selections of material taken from a widely used third grade reader. What they found was astounding to them. The readability of these selections ranged from the primer level through the fourth grade What is more, selec tions located in the latter part of the reader sometimes yielded readability levels lower than those of selections in the first part of the book. Indeed, one passage from the last quarter of the book was graded to be at the primer level according to the formula used. To those who have had some experience in the application of readability formulas, these results are not so astounding. It is known that while basal readers, such as the one discussed in the first paragraph, may have been correctly graded at third grade level, short passages extracted randomly from them may vary widely in terms of the criteria considered by the various readability formulas. Furthermore, it is logical to expect that the range of measured readability will be in indirect proportion to the length of the pas sages graded. When conducting informal reading inventories, teachers and other reading diagnosticians frequently select passages from graded books. At the lower levels of difficulty these passages are usually short. materials become more difficult and pupils become more mature readers, the length of the selected passages generally increases. In an IRA Service Bulletin, Johnson and Kress (1965) advise that when constructing informal reading inventories, As few as thirty words might be used at preprimer level and yet two hundred fifty to three hundred at ninth reader level. It is clear that a problem exists in the selection of suitable pas sages for informal reading inventories. The assumption that a short selection taken from the latter part of a third grade reader repre sents material typical of that faced during the latter part of the third grade may be erroneous. How then can one be sure that the passages chosen for informal inventories are fairly typical of mate