Quantitative vs. Qualitative:Hi/Lo Text that Struggling Readers Truly ComprehendIn an effort to meet the demand for lower reading levels, writers of "Hi/Lo" materials (high- interest, low-vocabulary) often cut sentences into short, choppy chunks and use as many short, high-frequency words as possible. This is the quickest way to achieve low reading level scores on several popular "quantitative" readability formulas. However, in the process of producing short sentences, writers often delete words like if, because, so that, while, forcing the struggling reader to infer the relationship among ideas — a task they are ill-prepared to do. Thus, students have to work even harder to understand. These same writers often simplify the vocabulary too far, such that they confuse students and fail to expose them to the words and ideas that will take them to the next level. For example, consider a simplified lesson on evolution in which the writer has avoided using the word evolved. Students read, "Apes turned into men." To a generation accustomed to television and computer programs where beings morph into a variety of forms, this might not have quite the meaning that the teacher intended. Start-to-Finish books are not written to a "quantitative" readability formula, but rather from a "qualitative" approach. They are written for success; that is, they are written in an authentic manner by experienced authors who produce text that is as clear and coherent and as simple as the underlying ideas permit. The authors assume that the struggling reader brings little background knowledge and vocabulary to the reading experience. Once the author has completed the manuscript, it then passes through the scrutiny of three editors, each with many years of experience teaching struggling readers. Two of these editors are speech/language pathologists and one is a learning disabilities specialist. Based on their collective experience of listening to students' oral reading errors, Start-to-Finish editors have developed a set of more than 50 guidelines for writing and editing easy-to-read text. All guidelines are applied flexibly with sensitivity to the particular context and educational needs of the student. The editors find ways to change the text to enable students to read more smoothly and keep reading. In the Gold Library, text is modified to increase the reader's motivation to keep reading, freeing them to think about ideas in the book. By changing things that are unnecessarily difficult, students have more processing space available to concentrate on the complexities that are essential to the book. Just how far do Start-to-Finish editors go to ensure success? Consider the use of the word little. The word little is one of the first sight words that many children learn in first grade. It is listed at the Pre-Primer level in the EDL Core Vocabularies (Steck-Vaughn, 1989). But the early use of the word is a simple adjective meaning small as in Ben had a little dog and later, students learn a little meaning a small quantity as in Ben had a little money. What does the struggling reader do, then, when encountering the sentence Ben had little money for the first time, where the word little is used to emphasize how very little money Ben had? Either they ignore the fact that the article a is missing and read it as Ben had a little money or they assume the author has made a mistake. To make sure struggling readers get the nuance intended by the author, Start-to-Finish editors change the sentence to Ben didn't have very much money or Ben had very little money. Every word in a Start-to-Finish text can be a decision point. In their 1991 study, Chall and Conard found that while more capable students profited from material that was at their grade level or above, students who were two or more grade levels below did not do well on materials above their level. Teachers responding to Chall and Conard's survey about school texts expressed the wish that publishers provide books with "sophisticated ideas but on lower reading levels." Older struggling readers need rich and motivating materials that are at their reading levels but reflect the concerns of their cognitive and social maturity. This material becomes more and more difficult to provide as students get older and their ages become more and more discrepant with their reading skills. Carefully evaluate text for your older struggling students. Remember to think about the quality of the words and sentences on the pages, not the size and number of words in the sentences. Comprehensible text that reflects the cognitive and social maturity of your struggling readers is achievable when every word is a "decision point." References:Chall, J. & Conard, S. (1991). Should textbooks challenge students: A case for easy or hard textbooks. New York: Teachers College Press. | ||