Assessing the Suitability of Reading Materials for ESL Students

Abstract

The paper begins with an examination of the criteria by which first and second language reading texts have traditionally been graded, criteria which focus primarily on the linguistic characteristics of a text. It is proposed that ifreading is viewed as interaction between a text and a reader, there are other variables to consider, those related to the reader side of the process: the readers' interests, background knowledge and purposes for reading. Within this interactive framework and after the reader variables have been considered, the subject matter, format, organization and discourse and linguistic variables of a text can be assessed. Implications of recent research in these areas are discussed. In conclusion, a set of guidelines is proposed for assessing the suitability of both graded and ungraded'texts for ESL students.In addition to all the other tasks confronting ESL classroom teachers is that of choosing suitable reading material for their students. In my own teaching, I have been frequently disappointed to find that published ESL graded reading materials were unsuitable for my ESL students. There is often a wide range of difficulty within a set of reading passages supposedly written at the same level; some are too easy, others appropriately challenging, while others prove frustratingly difficult. First language graded material sometimes provides a suitable alternative but often the same problems arise. I have had much greater success when I have adapted graded materials, adapted "authentic" texts or written my own. My dissatisfaction with much of the available material led me to explore more systematically the criteria I have used in determining the suitability of a text. In this paper I will look at the criteria that have been developed in the past for grading and sequencing reading material for both first and second language learners and will discuss their merits and weaknesses. I will then discuss a number of other factors which are not considered in these formulas but which I have found to be very important when assessing the suitability of reading materials. READABILITY FORMULASIn both first language (Ll) and second language (L2) materials, formulas for determining text difficulty have been developed. Such formulas ASSESSING READING MATERIALS 37 have been extensively investigated and are widely used both for basal reading series and for the writing of textbooks in subjects other than language. Some publishers employ "readability experts" to ensure that materials are written at just the right level of difficulty for their intended readers. Most of the formulas developed and used for assessing Ll materials since 1939 are based on a combination of measures of vocabulary difficulty and sentence length (Klare 1974). Schemes developed for grading materials in second language publications have generally been based on vocabulary size and difficulty of grammatical structures. In some, sentence length and the number and type of complex sentences is also measured.Such schemes and formulas are appealing becau...

Incorporating Local Culture in English Teaching Material for Undergraduate Students

“…The modification was not done simply by shortening sentences or omitting difficult words, for such actions does not always reduce the difficulty level of the text [21]. Instead, the texts used were selected based on students' interest, needs, and prior [22], [5].…”

“…the pictures were used as facilitating tool to help understanding the text. The presence of the pictures is very important, because lowering the difficulty of a reading text should be achieved by providing facilitation tools instead of simply using simpler words [24], [21]. Another step taken was deleting unnecessary information from the reading text.…”

“…Such unnecessary information within reading text were usually found in articles taken from newspaper. These steps ensured that the reading texts were appropriate to the students' level [21], [22], [25].…”

Effect of Lowering the Reading Level of a Health Education Pamphlet on Increasing Comprehension by ESL Students

“…Although readability formulas are less commonly used in the ESL field than the health education field, readability in ESL often has a similar focus: vocabulary size and the difficulty of grammatical structures (Hetherington, 1985).…”

“…Numerous authorities argue eloquently for including considerion of content, discourse features, format, and, most importantly, the reader, as well as linguistic variables (Carrell, 1987;Hetherington, 1985;LotheringtonWoloszyn, 1988). The research is sparse and inconclusive, but it calls into question focusing heavily on the lexical and syntactical.…”