A New Readability Formula for Primary-Grade Reading Materials
A New Readability Formula for Primary-Grade Reading Materials
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小学阅读材料可读性新公式
DOI：
10.1086/458513
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发表时间：
1953
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
G. Spache
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
G. Spache
近年来，人们对判断印刷材料阅读难度的公式产生了相当大的兴趣，并使用了这些公式。这种兴趣大部分可以追溯到1943年最初的Flesch公式（4）的提出。这个公式以及Dale和Chall后来的研究（3）已被广泛用于评估工业通信、书籍、杂志和政府出版物。最近的一份关于可读性研究的文章和书籍的摘要列出了1943- 1950年关于这一主题的96篇出版物（5）。对这些公式和研究的审查表明，人们的兴趣主要集中在评价为成人编写的材料上。三个主要的公式--弗莱什公式（4）、洛吉公式（7）和戴尔-查尔公式（3）--都不适用于为四级以下阅读水平的个人编写的材料。其他公式，如Lewerenz（6）或威尔金森（9）可用于评估初级材料，但在作者看来，这些都是冗长和繁琐的。由于客观测量阅读难度的价值是显而易见的，作者和他的同事们试图设计一个公式，这个公式对小学阅读材料很有用。有许多要素可用于估计阅读难度。其中包括单词长度、句子长度和个人单词或个人句子的百分比。此外，还使用了音节数、词缀或介词短语数以及各种词汇表中提到的难词比例。Dale和Chall回顾了这些不同因素与阅读困难的关系。他们发现，对阅读难度的最佳预测是从难词（80%的四年级学生都知道的3,000个单词之外的单词）和平均句子长度中获得的。另外两个几乎具有同等预测价值的因素是词缀的数量和769个单词的戴尔列表之外的单词的数量（2）。这是一个在国际幼儿园联盟列表（1）和桑代克和洛吉的教师词汇书（8）的前1,000个单词中找到的单词列表。提交人及其同事
IN RECENT YEARS there has been considerable interest in, and use of, formulas for judging the reading difficulty of printed materials. Most of this interest has dated from the offering in 1943 of the original Flesch formula (4). This formula and the later studies of Dale and Chall (3) have been used extensively in the evaluation of industrial communications, books, magazines, and government publications. A recent summary of articles and books dealing with readability studies lists over ninety-six publications on this topic in 1943-50 (5). An examination of these formulas and studies reveals that the interest has been focused largely on the evaluation of materials written for adults. None of the three leading formulasthe Flesch (4), the Lorge (7), or the Dale-Chall (3)-is applicable to materials written for individuals reading on levels below Grade IV. Other formulas, such as the Lewerenz (6) or Wilkinson (9) are available for evaluating primary materials, but, in the author's opinion, these are lengthy and cumbersome. Because of the obvious values in having objective measures of reading difficulty, the author and his co-workers have attempted to devise a formula that would be useful with primary-grade reading materials. There are a number of elements which may be used to estimate reading difficulty. Among these are word length, sentence length, and per cent of personal words or personal sentences. In addition, the number of syllables, the number of affixes or of prepositional phrases, and the proportion of difficult words mentioned in various word lists have been used. Dale and Chall have reviewed the relation of these various elements to reading difficulty. They find that the best prediction of reading difficulty is obtained from the number of difficult words (those outside a list of 3,000 words known to 80 per cent of fourthgraders) and average sentence length. Two other elements of almost equal predictive value are the number of affixes and the number of words outside the Dale list of 769 words (2). This is a list of the words found both in the International Kindergarten Union list (1) and the first 1,000 words of Thorndike and Lorge's Teacher's Word Book (8). The author and his co-workers have