Exploring How Rhetorical Organization Contributes to the Readability of Essays

Abstract

The facilitative benefits of genre-specific reading have often been cited as a truism in the field of writing education. In line with this, writing center self-access libraries typically provide a selection of composition texts, including rhetorics (anthologies of model paragraphs and essays). Readability formulae (e.g., the Lexile Readability Formula) are often used to determine whether these texts will be a good fit for potential readers, and although the Lexile Formula reliably and validly assesses two features (i.e., semantic and syntactic), it does not consider other contributing features during the text selection process (e.g., rhetorical organization). To address this, this sequential, mixed-methods study explored the effects of rhetorical organization on undergraduate English language learners’ perceptions of difficulty when reading exemplars (i.e., essays) excerpted from rhetorics. The results indicated that rhetorical organization influences readability both as (a) a primary (i.e., an isolated feature) and (b) a conjoined feature (i.e., comprising two or more associated entities where the second impacts the first). The article also provides a suggestion for writing education professionals and the publishing industry: Readability formulae should be administered in a hybrid fashion, where additional features such as rhetorical organization are subjectively considered when assessing the difficulty of exemplars.

A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling Exploration of EFL Learners’ Perceptions of What Contributes to the Readability of Model Paragraphs

“…Signal words did not significantly affect text difficulty, which is in alignment with research that has found that signal words do not affect students' reading comprehension (Meyer, 1975), but not with research that argues the importance of signal words (Baker, 2021;Van Silfhout et al, 2014) or research that states that signal words affect students' understanding of texts (Aidinlou & Pandian, 2011;Al-Surmi, 2011;Miccinati, 1975;Roen, 1984;Xu et al, 2019). Furthermore, signal words did not mediate the relationship between rhetorical organization and paragraph structure, contrary to previous literature that argues signal words assist readers in forming a mental representation of the relationships within a text (Xu et al, 2019).…”

“…That is, some text types are more complex than others, learners’ awareness can affect understanding (Flick & Anderson, 1980), and rhetorical structures are not constant across cultures (Kaplan, 1966, 2005). Nevertheless, taxonomy explorations have attempted to provide as distinctive a picture as possible (see Alkhaleefah, 2017; Amiri et al, 2012; Baker, 2021; Carrell, 1984a; Freedle & Kostin, 1991, 1993; Goh, 1990; Lei, 2010; Meyer & Freedle, 1984; Putra, 2012; Saadatnia et al, 2016; Salmani, 2010; Sharp, 2002; Talbot et al, 1991; Yali & Jiliang, 2007; Zhang, 2008). However, the results have generally been incongruent due mostly to varying text types under study, methodology, and participants’ reading levels (Baker, 2021).…”

“…Discussions of rhetorical organization (the way ideas are organized in texts to make them flow smoothly) generally begin with Meyer's (1975) subclassifications and include more modern typologies (e.g., illustration, process, description, narrative, cause/effect, comparison/ contrast, and argumentation/persuasion) (Baker, 2021), but one type can occur in another (Spiro & Taylor, 1980). In general, two sources of difficulty have been noted: (a) the complexity of rhetorical classification/ subclassification and (b) readers' formal schemata, and familiarity with the rhetorical organization employed (Carrell, 1987).…”

“…However, research with EFL learners begins with Le (1969) and has shown mostly positive results (i.e., signal words facilitate understanding) (Aidinlou & Pandian, 2011;Al-Surmi, 2011), as they support a coherent mental representation of clause relations (Xu et al, 2019). However, learner proficiency (Chung, 2000;Kim & Clariana, 2017) and awareness (Baker, 2021;Quan, 2008) have been shown to play a part. Signal words have also been shown to interact with other factors.…”

“…Readability assessment has been widely researched and applied in the past century (DuBay, 2007a) by applying two-factor (semantic, syntactic) quantitative readability formulae to measure texts, as these two features have been shown to be reliable predictors of readability and easily measured (DuBay, 2007b). However, examining only two factors and how they apply to the text, not exploring reader-text interaction, has been repeatedly criticized as overly reductive, as it has become generally accepted that readability assessments should include a consideration of readers' perceptions of the many features that make up text difficulty (Baker, 2021;Gunning, 2003;Weaver, 2000).…”