Chapter 2 Review of Literature. 2.2 International Studies on Readability Research

Transcription

1 2.1 Introduction Chapter 2 Review of Literature Review of literature is the synthesis and analysis of the relevant published works. The aim of the literature review is to show how the present study relates to the literature of the previous studies and also diversified in its content and format. The review of literature is a form of description of the summaries means what others have published in the form of summaries. This chapter will give a clear knowledge of what has been done and what is to be done to the researcher. An attempt has been made here to collect possible researches in connection with the Mass Communication and Journalism studies in general and readability related studies in particular for the field of print media. 2.2 International Studies on Readability Research George R. Klare (1969) analyzed the professionals of newspaper and other organs of Mass Communication, in his finding led to the two conclusions that newspapers and other media frequently contain too hard reading for their readers/publics. For this study here has been done by readability consultants, editors, teachers, writers of individual and media houses. Wilbur Schramm (1947) study revealed that newspaper readership depth that a news story loses readers rapidly in the first few paragraphs; thereafter, the curve of loss flattens out. The average reader tends to read between a third and a tenth of the total news content of a paper. A formula combining initial readership with average depth of readership provides the most accurate index of news reading yet available. Trenchard (1952) traces the reading ease and human interest of advertising and editorial copy of prewar and postwar issues of Time and Newsweek, study has been carried out 10 issues for each year from each magazine for the periods of and Both editorial copy and advertising publications were found within the reader s comprehension. He found that advertisement copy is difficult and editorial copy is easier. 50

2 Gunning (1945) demonstrated the work of "Readable News Reports" in measuring the difficulty of news and prescribing for its simplification, eight metropolitan dailies and the United Press world-wide service were studied for readability. In his finding shown that while news writing is very difficult, it is possible to simplify. "Readable News Reports" was able to help a paper produce simple, concise, and clear writing and to cut the reading difficulty of United Press copy by five grade levels. Griffin (1953), The Reading Ease and Human Interest of the column "Sursum Corda" by Father James M. Gillis were compared with those of nine other New York columns. Father Gillis ranked highest in both Reading Ease and Human Interest: Standard for Reading Ease and Very Interesting for Human Interest. Scores of the other writers ranged from Fairly Difficult to Difficult for Reading Ease; from Interesting to Mildly Interesting for Human Interest. Getzloe (1946) reveled in his results of a study of world-affairs reporting adequate coverage, but was less readability than in the previous year. The United Press rated most readable; the New York Times was very difficult, summaries were found more readable than detailed reports and editorials were still easier. Johnson (1945) analyzed the Readable News Reports of United Press news reports, found that copy needed improvement in readability. Later improvement of five grade levels was made. The results and recommendations to the United Press staff through a series of memoranda from the vice president and general manager of United press are here collected and reprinted. Nieman (1950) study shows that readability is not enough, and that the rules of English can be violated without destroying communication, the features of legible writing are discussed, placing major emphasis on the tools of the craft. Grammar so correct that it excludes everything without any logic, plus exact word usage, will insure not only readability but good writing as well. Flesch (1951) in a hand book, a summation of the readability campaign published by the Associated Press in with he was the consultant, presents rules and suggestions for readable and clear writing have briefly described the principles of readability with examples for many of the points made. 51

3 R.V Brown (1946) reveals in a study of foreign news writing, it was found that the average foreign news was written for a reader with 14 years of school, although the average adult has had less than nine years. Editorial writers were found to be more easily understood than reporters. The importance of clear writing to make foreign news significant and interesting was stressed. P.W. Burton and C.E. Swanson (1948) Institutional advertising was analyzed to see if it could reach most readers. "Potential" and "typical" audiences were determined, and it was found that 77 of the 100 advertisements examined could reach 40% or less of the U.S. adult population. J.C Craig (1953) examined nearly 200 best-selling books of all types published between 1662 and 1945 were examined to determine their readability in general and their vocabulary load in particular. It was found that most best-sellers are too difficult for the average reader to understand, that only a few of the "great books" can be read by the average person and that about one-third of the classics are too difficult for over 80% of the population. Dolch (1938) determined the vocabulary burden of the Gospel of St. Mark. Results showed that almost one-half of the words were familiar to preschool children and all but 13 of the words were found in the 20,000 commonest words listed by Thorn dike in his word book. Dunlap (1951) compared newspaper samples and samples taken from an eighth-grade reader to demonstrate the process of determining readability levels. The findings of the study indicated that both samples covered a wide range of reading levels and that these levels were comparable between the two. Both of the samples were very similar according to the elements measured by the Dale-Chall formula. Flesch (1945) To sell the idea of readability formulas in improving the writing of advertising copy, the need for simple prose which will appeal to the customer rather than the client is stressed. In support of this point, five imaginary "cases" of the application of readability principles to a radio commercial, an institutional ad, a subway ad card, stockholders' reports, and employee instruction manuals are given. Flesch (1947) shown that the readership of advertising copy follows readability and which is easier than to editorial copy, and determined that readability of ads in 52

4 magazines and newspapers for which readership reports. It was concluded that the most readable ads copies are more readable than the editorial copy where order to be readable. Flesch (1951) in a hand book, a summation of the readability campaign conducted by the Associated Press in with he was the consultant, presents rules and suggestions for readable and clear writing. The principles of readability are briefly described in action, together with examples for many of the points made. Martha Ann Scranton s (1970) study on SMOG Grading: A Readability Formula by G. Harry McLaughlin analyses the structure and use of five readability formulas w.r.t. SMOG grading and observes: Formulas provide only for Standard English. They fail to evaluate slang expressions because they are usually born of colloquial speech. Where speech is informal, written expression is formal and rigid. Terms immediately understood when spoken may not be recognized in print. The formulas tend to equate familiar words and shortness of words with ease of reading. Trina Mc Lellan (1960) and grant Robinson compared contemporary news writing styles with those of 15 to 30 years ago. The research considers the language of hard news and editorials by examining a national, state based and a regional newspaper over three one-week periods across the three decades. The study found that the average complexity of language evident in all three newspapers has been consistently high. Sanford N.Hotchkiss and Donald G.Paterson observe the increasing use of the Flesch formulas in all phases of industrial communication makes it imperative that the user have available not only the original formulas but also those studies and articles related to his field. Hence in this chapter the studies with the use of Readability formulas in general and in the field of journalism in particular are referred to. Urquhart (1979) found out that comprehension, learning and creative thinking appear to be closely linked in reading. Clearly, the reader s purposes and interest are important considerations in learning and in alteration of learning behaviour. This corresponds to the fact that readability is much related to the reading and learning behaviour of the reader. 53

5 According to Selzer (1981), reading is a highly individualistic activity and the readability formulas cannot be applicable to a generalized set of readers. Since the formulas are typically based on two variables sentence length and word length, text often limit themselves to two simple stylistic tenets use short words and short sentences. This becomes a very over simplistic approach for predicting readability. The formulas, in fact, have not been calibrated for highly skilled adult readers. Spiro et al. (1981) compared the efficacy of comprehension test (cloze procedure) and readability formulas in order to examine the readability of marketing texts. It was found that the comprehension test which focuses on reader analysis provides a better measure than does the readability formulas which focus solely on textual characteristics in evaluating the readability. The cloze procedure is a better measure of text difficulty because it was actual reader comprehension as the base upon which it estimates text difficulty. It is the reader who decides how easily a text can be understood but not the text that decides how easily it can be understood by the reader. Davison (1985) pointed out that the other aspect of readability research which does not make use of readability formulas cannot be ignored. This aspect takes into consideration features or variables such as the type of readers involved, abilities of the reader, as well as the reader's background knowledge, purpose of reading, the reader s personal interest in the text and perception of the situation in which reading a particular text is taking place. This fact is supported by Nunan (1985) by stating that content familiarity and background knowledge of the readers have an important effect on the levels of comprehension. Readers with different background knowledge (including different cultural knowledge) may read an identical text in quite different ways. Stevens et al. (1992) pointed out a serious limitation of readability formulas by stating that the formulas do not consider the prior knowledge, language ability or motivation of the reader. Communication involves not only the elements of text difficulty but also elements of reader ability. That is, the formula scores do not assess the interactive nature of reading comprehension. Reading readers is a way of assessing readability according to Steinke (1995). He noted that the reader s impression of a particular text such as individual predispositions, social affiliations and information processing ability can influence the comprehensibility of the text. So, 54

6 understanding reader s response and addressing their concerns can make writers and journalists prepare more readable articles, attract more readers and invoke greater interest from readers. Oliver et al. (1998) found out that quantitative measurement of text by using Flesch readability formula cannot capture the holistic evaluation of readability. For example, readers individual interest in a specific subject may influence familiarity with the concerned topic and written text, thereby affecting the perception of readability of the text. This implies that along with objective testing (quantitative measurement) to examine readability by calculating the readability scores using readability formulas, subjective testing (qualitative measurement) by analyzing the responses of the readers in regard to subject specific characteristics is equally important for assessing a holistic view of readability of the concerned text. Woods et al. (1998) indicated that comprehensibility tests and directly asking for readers comment were much more valuable in revising text than the readability measures examined. They also stressed on the importance of reader analysis in predicting how readable a concerned text is. Friedman et al. (2006) found out that none of the readability instruments (readability formulas such as Flesch Reading Ease formula, Flesch-Kincaid formula, Fog Index, Fry Readability Graph) were designed to determine the effects of visuals on design factors that could influence readability and comprehension of print and web-based cancer information. They made a point that readability formulas are too much oriented on the linguistic characteristics and fail to acknowledge other visual factors necessary to understand the overall text. Janam et al. (2010) In one of the recent studies on the development of readability studies and researches over the years, pointed out that most of the earlier readability studies were conducted in a quantitative manner (measuring readability scores by using readability formulas) known as Positivist Paradigm which was not at all adequate and effective because such measurements were focused outside the readers only. So, the researchers predicted a new and a qualitative approach to readability studies known as Interpretative Paradigm where the researcher will try to find out what is in the readers mind when they are reading by interpreting what these readers say. The authors hope this new paradigm will open new doors to the development of readability research. 55

7 Edward Fry (1990) 37 observes that most formulas require a passage of 300 words or longer. Using them on shorter passages causes much less reliability the scores jump around a lot and you can be less sure of the true readability score. This presents a problem for assessing readability of short but important passages such as those in science textbooks, math textbooks, passages used in tests, manufacturers warranties, and rules and procedures in driver s training booklets. The Social Science Citation Index shows that readability articles are among the most frequently cited research in a wide variety of professional articles. A new readability formula has been developed to work on passages from 40 to 99 words long provided that they contain at least 3 sentences. This new formula can also be used on passages between 100 and 300 words long. 38 Significance of the Study: Compared to the published articles on methods of measuring readability, those on applications were meager. In readability, as in other fields of educational research, the major effort had been made in reporting the discovery of new relationships and techniques. Not enough effort had gone into reporting how these techniques were used, and whether they were helpful. Yet, if educational research is to fulfill its function, its applications should be followed up systematically, and reported in the literature. What 39 Jeanne S.Chall observed in 1947 about US holds good for India even today. Significance of this study: It does not take a population still does not possess the basic information so necessary for effective living. This is true, whether in the field of health, consumer education, or citizenship. Although millions of books, pamphlets, and articles have been printed on these subjects, the average person is still uninformed. 40 Sanford N.Hotchkiss and Donald G.Paterson observe the increasing use of the Flesch formulas in all phases of industrial communication makes it imperative that the 37 Edward Fry. A Readability formula for short passages Journal of Reading, May Jeanne S.Chall. A Survey of users of the Dale-Chall Formula A article in Educational Research bulletin Vol.XXXV, No.8, November 14, Jeanne S, Chall. This business of Readability A article in Educational Research bulletin Vol.XXVI, No.1, January 15, Sanford N.Hotchkiss and Donald G.Paterson. Flesch Readability Reading List 56

8 user have available not only the original formulas but also those studies and articles related to his field. Hence in this chapter the studies with the use of Readability formulas in general and in the field of journalism in particular are referred to. According to Marie J. Abram and William D. Dowling 41, written materials have content and structure. The content of the material tell what is being said and the structure tells how the content is being said. Structure can also be called the author s style of writing. Fleda Brown Jackson, W.David Sloan, and James R.Bennett 42 remark that New journalism is the one that concerns writing which makes deliberate use of fictional techniques for somewhat different purposes. Richard Bamberger and Annette T.Rabin (1984) 43 point out that It is a common complaint that readability measurement takes into account only language difficulty, without regard to non language factors, is not quite valid, since, in most cases, language difficulty is also an indication of the overall difficulty of a piece of reading material. Readability formulas: With so much of learning activities dependent on reading skills, one main field of research in suitability of classroom reaching materials has been in measuring the extent of readability of the materials. For this purpose several reading formulas have been developed The grade levels obtained using the indices like SMOG, GFOG, etc., are used to grant approval of a given text book for a given grade. By approval is meant that the book was rated by the formulas as being within the grade range in which it was used. A book was classified as disapproved when one or both formulas classified it above the grade in which it was used. (Leroy N.Wood) Edward Fry (2002) points out that the procedure for determining difficulty has been objectified by the use of readability formulas since 1923 (Lively and Pressey, 41 Marie J. Abram and William D. Dowling. How Readable are Parenting Books (1979; 365) 42 Fleda Brown Jackson, and W.David Sloan, James R.Bennett. Journalism As Art : A Selective Annotated Bibliography 43 Richard Bamberger and Annette T.Rabin. New Approaches to readability Austrian Research (1984) 44 Leroy N. Wood. Readability of Certain Textbooks 45 Edward Fry. Readability versus leveling 57

9 1923) and continues to the present day. Readability formulas usually give a numerical score to rank books or other reading matter in an order of difficulty. Sometimes this numerical score corresponds to a suggested approximate grade level. Leveling more modern (Clay,1991) and is similar to readability in that it employs various systems for determining the difficulty of books or reading material, but it is more subjective and is used mostly at the beginning reading levels. Readability & Leveling: The Literacy Dictionary (Harris & Hodges, 1995) readability is defined as the ease or comprehension because of style of writing (p.203). Weaver (200) defined leveling as selecting books to match the competencies of a reader or writer (p.57). Both are right. Both are incomplete. Kenneth Goodman (1986) speaking for the Reading Commission of NCTE states : Readability formulas used in selecting and rewriting materials do not produce appropriate, readable texts. In fact the tinkering with texts to produce acceptable readability levels may turn them into texts which are harder to read. That s why Sheila Fitzgerald as president to NCTE and Bernice Cullinan as president of IRA have issued a joint statement calling for the abandonment of use of readability formulas in preparing and choosing school texts. (Edward B.Fry) 46 Significance of this study: Since reading is still the chief means whereby persons gain information, skills, and entertainment, the effectiveness with which books, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets convey this information remains an important problem. Newspapers and magazines are increasingly aware of their deficiencies as instruments for communicating ideas and have recently shown concern in developing readable stories. The early attempts to make their publications readable by intuitive and rule-of-thumb methods have given way to an acceptance of the objective methods of measuring readability methods that have a risen through an accumulation of research carried on within the past twenty years. (Edgar Dale and Jeane S.Chall) 47 Readability Research: Research in readability has come from educators and from leaders in adult education and from librarians who tried to find some means of putting the right book into the hands of the right reader (Edgar Dale and Jeane S.Chall) 46 Edward B.Fry. Reading Formulas Maligned but valid 47 Edgar Dale and Jeanne S.Chall. The concept of Readability 58

10 Readability formulas were originally developed with the aim of ranking school textbooks in terms of difficulty in order to assist teachers in the selection of appropriate texts for children of different ages 48 (DuBay, 2004, 2007a, 2007b). Today, many writers and scholars use the readability formulas as standards for testing readability. They are widely used in education, publishing, business, health care, law, the military, industrial and government organizations. In spite of the success of the readability formulas, they were always the centre of controversy (DuBay, 2007b). The major discontent with the classic readability formulas expressed by the critics was that they measured mere surface factors, not real sources of difficulty. Some critics acknowledged that the classic formulas had practical validity and value, but were essentially a-theoretical (Chall, 1996) 49. Another reason why readability studies are now considered unrelated to the comprehension process stems from research in cognitive science in the 1980s that identified problems with texts that had been manipulated or written to satisfy readability constraints (Janam et al., 2010). Cognitive research, which has marked a paradigm change in readability research claims that meanings reside in the cognitive nature of readers. Interpretation and construction of meanings therefore, comes from the readers mind in an interaction with the text expending a lot on the cognitive capabilities of the reader Readability and Newspaper Readership Several studies in the 1940s showed that even small increases in readability greatly increases readership in large-circulation newspapers. Donald Murphy (1947) in his study of Wallace's Farmer used a split-run edition to study the effects of making text easier to read. They found that reducing from the 9th to the 6th-grade level increased readership 43% for an article on 'nylon'. There was a gain of 42,000 readers in a circulation of 275,000. He found a 60% increase in readership for an article on 'corn'. He also found a better response from people under DuBay, W.H. (Eds.). (2004). The principles of readability. California: Impact Information. DuBay, W.H. (Eds.). (2007a). Smart language: Readers, readability, and the grading of text. California: Impact Information. DuBay, W.H. (Eds.). (2007b). The classic readability studies. California: Impact Information. 49 Chall, J.S. (1996). Varying approaches to readability measurement. Revue québecoise de linguistique, 25, Retrieved from 59

11 Wilber Schramm interviewed 1,050 newspaper readers. He found that an easier reading style helps to decide how much of an article is read. This was called reading persistence, depth, or perseverance. He also found that people will read less of long articles than of short ones. A story 9 paragraphs long will lose three out of 10 readers by the 5th paragraph. A shorter story will lose only two. Schramm also found that the use of subheads, bold-face paragraphs, and stars to break up a story actually lose readers. Melvin Lostutter (1947) in his study showed that newspapers generally were written at a level five years above the ability of average American adult readers. He also found that the reading ease of newspaper articles had little to do with the education, experience, or personal interest of the journalists writing the stories. It had more to do with the convention and culture of the industry. Lostutter argued for more readability testing in newspaper writing. He wrote that improved readability must be a "conscious process somewhat independent of the education and experience of the staff writers. In 1948, Bernard Feld did a study of every item and ad in the Birmingham News of 20 November He divided the items into those above the 8th-grade level and those at the 8th grade or below. He chose the 8th-grade breakpoint because that was the average reading level of adult readers. An 8th-grade text "...will reach about 50 percent of all American grown-ups," he wrote. Among the wire-service stories, the lower group got two-thirds more readers, and among local stories, 75 percent more readers. Feld also believed in drilling writers in Flesch's clear-writing principle. School Renaissance Institute and Touchstone Applied Science Associates took up a most ambitious project on readability in 2000 used 650 nor med reading texts, 474 million words from all the text in 28,000 books read by students. The project also used the reading records of more than 30,000 who read and were tested on 950,000 books. They found that three variables give the most reliable measure of text reading ease words per sentence average grade level of words characters per word 60

12 They also found that: To help learning, the teacher should match book reading ease with reading skill. Reading often helps with reading gains. For reading alone below the 4th grade, the best learning gain requires at least 85% comprehension. Advanced readers need 92% comprehension for independent reading. Book length can be a good measure of reading ease. Feedback and interaction with the teacher are the most important factors in reading. Edward Fry (1990) 50 observes that most formulas require a passage of 300 words or longer. Using them on shorter passages causes much less reliability the scores jump around a lot and you can be less sure of the true readability score. This presents a problem for assessing readability of short but important passages such as those in science textbooks, math textbooks, passages used in tests, manufacturers warranties, and rules and procedures in driver s training booklets. The Social Science Citation Index shows that readability articles are among the most frequently cited research in a wide variety of professional articles. A new readability formula has been developed to work on passages from 40 to 99 words long provided that they contain at least 3 sentences. This new formula can also be used on passages between 100 and 300 words long. 51 Significance of the Study: Compared to the published articles on methods of measuring readability, those on applications were meager. In readability, as in other fields of educational research, the major effort had been made in reporting the discovery of new relationships and techniques. Not enough effort had gone into reporting how these techniques were used, and whether they were helpful. Yet, if educational research is to fulfill its function, its applications should be followed up systematically, and reported in the literature. 50 Edward Fry. A Readability formula for short passages Journal of Reading, May Jeanne S.Chall. A Survey of users of the Dale-Chall Formula A article in Educational Research bulletin Vol.XXXV, No.8, November 14,

13 What 52 Jeanne S.Chall observed in 1947 about US holds good for India even today. Significance of the study: It does not take a population still does not possess the basic information so necessary for effective living. This is true, whether in the field of health, consumer education, or citizenship. Although millions of books, pamphlets, and articles have been printed on these subjects, the average person is still uninformed. According to Marie J. Abram and William D. Dowling 53, written materials have content and structure. The content of the material tell what is being said and the structure tells how the content is being said. Structure can also be called the author s style of writing. Fleda Brown Jackson, W. David Sloan, and James R. Bennett 54 remark that New journalism is the one that concerns writing which makes deliberate use of fictional techniques for somewhat different purposes. Richard Bamberger and Annette T. Rabin (1984) 55 point out that It is a common complaint that readability measurement takes into account only language difficulty, without regard to non language factors, is not quite valid, since, in most cases, language difficulty is also an indication of the overall difficulty of a piece of reading material. Readability formulas: With so much of learning activities dependent on reading skills, one main field of research in suitability of classroom reaching materials has been in measuring the extent of readability of the materials. For this purpose several reading formulas have been developed The grade levels obtained using the indices like SMOG, GFOG, etc., are used to grant approval of a given text book for a given grade. By approval is meant that the book was rated by the formulas as being within the grade range in which it was used. A book was classified as disapproved when one or both formulas classified it above the grade in which it was used. (Leroy N.Wood) Jeanne S, Chall. This business of Readability A article in Educational Research bulletin Vol.XXVI, No.1, January 15, Marie J. Abram and William D. Dowling. How Readable are Parenting Books (1979; 365) 54 Fleda Brown Jackson, and W.David Sloan, James R.Bennett. Journalism As Art : A Selective Annotated Bibliography 55 Richard Bamberger and Annette T.Rabin. New Approaches to readability Austrian Research (1984) 56 Leroy N. Wood. Readability of Certain Textbooks 62

14 57 Edward Fry (2002) points out that the procedure for determining difficulty has been objectified by the use of readability formulas since 1923 (Lively and Pressey, 1923) and continues to the present day. Readability formulas usually give a numerical score to rank books or other reading matter in an order of difficulty. Sometimes this numerical score corresponds to a suggested approximate grade level. Leveling more modern (Clay,1991) and is similar to readability in that it employs various systems for determining the difficulty of books or reading material, but it is more subjective and is used mostly at the beginning reading levels. Readability & Leveling: The Literacy Dictionary (Harris & Hodges, 1995) readability is defined as the ease or comprehension because of style of writing (p.203). Weaver (200) defined leveling as selecting books to match the competencies of a reader or writer (p.57). Both are right. Both are incomplete. Kenneth Goodman (1986) speaking for the Reading Commission of NCTE states: Readability formulas used in selecting and rewriting materials do not produce appropriate, readable texts. In fact the tinkering with texts to produce acceptable readability levels may turn them into texts which are harder to read. That s why Sheila Fitzgerald as president to NCTE and Bernice Cullinan as president of IRA have issued a joint statement calling for the abandonment of use of readability formulas in preparing and choosing school texts. (Edward B.Fry) 58 Significance of the study: Since reading is still the chief means whereby persons gain information, skills, and entertainment, the effectiveness with which books, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets convey this information remains an important problem. Newspapers and magazines are increasingly aware of their deficiencies as instruments for communicating ideas and have recently shown concern in developing readable stories. The early attempts to make their publications readable by intuitive and rule-of-thumb methods have given way to an acceptance of the objective methods of measuring readability methods that have a risen through an accumulation of research carried on within the past twenty years. (Edgar Dale and Jeane S.Chall) Edward Fry. Readability versus leveling 58 Edward B.Fry. Reading Formulas Maligned but valid 59 Edgar Dale and Jeanne S.Chall. The concept of Readability 63

15 Readability Research: Research in readability has come from educators and from leaders in adult education and from librarians who tried to find some means of putting the right book into the hands of the right reader (Edgar Dale and Jeane S.Chall) The researcher Olmstead, Phyllis M. (1993) analyzed the readability of seven Central Florida newspapers and USA Today. Right writer, a grammar checker and readability computer program, was used to evaluate front page articles for each of the eight papers. The readability formulas invoked in the readability program included the Flesch-Kincaid, Flesch, and FOG indexes. 60 The average readability levels of the individual papers ranged from 9.37 to using the Flesch-Kincaid, to using the FOG. A rank order correlation of the three possible pairs of the tests resulted in was statistically significant for all pairs at the 05 a level. The article contains a twenty item bibliography reference list, three tables, a glossary of terms, and three appendixes. Some readability studies were developed using common word lists. Several authors claim that it was Edward Thorndike's vocabulary and comprehension studies that triggered the use of word lists in readability studies after he published a list of the most commonly used English words in 1921 (Chall & Conrad, 1990; Klare, 1963). Research by Bain (1979) 61 concluded that half of newspaper readers stop after reading lead paragraphs of newspaper articles, and stories that jump further reduces readership. Kevin Catalano (1990) indicates that "people resist stories that require more than high school- skill level." Catalano (1990), Healy (1990), Smith and Smith (1984) 62 all conclude that, on the average, newspapers write over the heads of most readers. Chall, J. S., & Conrad, S. S. (1990). Textbooks and Challenge: the influence of Educational Research. In D. L. Elliot & A. Woodward (Eds.), Textbooks and Schooling in the United States: Eighty-ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the 60 Phyllis M. Olmstead, M.Ed. University of Central Florida Spring 1993 READABILITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA NEWSPAPERS 620 Sherwood Oaks Circle Ocoee, FL (407) (V) 61 Bain, C., & Weaver, D. H. (1979). Newspaper Design and Newspaper Readership. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED ) 62 Smith, R. F., & Smith, K. L. (1984, October). A comparison of readability formulae as applied to newspaper stories. Journal of Reading, 28(1), pp

16 Study of Education, Part 2. Chicago, IL: National Society for the Study of Education. Healy, J. (1990, October). How readable are our newspapers? Judging from this study, we're losing lots of people in the FOG. ASNE Bulletin, pp Harrison, They should use simpler words, concrete and concise adjectives and adverbs, fewer clauses, and shorter sentences (see Appendix B). Readability studies should be conducted regularly by editors and reporters to monitor the reading levels of their work. Lower reading level papers are more attractive to alliterate (can read but don't) people than papers requiring more effort and to those people who want to read but have low reading skills. It would behoove all the papers to check the readability level of their papers and keep their readers in mind during the entire writing process. Nirmala Mani Adhikary (Ayod Dhaumya) (2010) researcher has studied editorials published in six Nepali broadsheets in the first week of August, 2010 and has applied the different available techniques for readability study ads proposed research has employed the Cloze procedure. As the Cloze procedure was developed and proposed in different language context. 63 Incorporating Gender into the Existing Curricula: Some Outlines Readability of news stories published on the front page of Nepali broadsheet dailies (Report of a research funded by the University Grants Commission, Nepal, 2010) 2.4. Indian Studies on Readability Measurement Bidyarani Asem (2012) in an evident critically reviewed the several readability studies in general and specifically use and need of the readability formulas. After gone through a descriptive survey of researches on readability with the considerations of qualitative and quantitative approaches of readability by analyzing the objective and subjective testing of literary poetic texts. Focus of this article was spread upon vocabulary and sentence structure, the reader s reading ability, prior knowledge, familiarity, interest. K. V. S. Hari Kumar et. al. (2013) With the selection of four journals that cover a that cover a broad range of specialties and audience primary objective of the study

17 was to assess the Flesch readability score and the secondary objectives were to study the Flesch grade and the correlation between the text characteristics and the Flesch score of the editorials of the medical journals The researchers have used the online version of the readability calculator ( and they analyzed the readability test results of the editorials for further comparison between all four journals. Dr Mahesh Kumar Mummadi et.al. (2015) analyzed the Indian Diabetic Association website regarding contents Readability, Comprehensibility and Understand ability and their usefulness of health related education materials on the internet. The similar topics from five most popular health information providing sites. For this study they used the various Readability tools for the selected website data are: Gunning Fog index (GFI), Coleman Liau index (CLI), The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), Automated, Readability Index (ARI), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook index (SMOG) and The Flesch Reading Ease (FRE). They proved that Indian website is good at readability when compared to other popular health information providing websites. The grade levels of the website ensures that Readable and Comprehensible to their audience. In a research paper Manjira Sinha Sakshi Sharma Tirthankar Dasgupta Anupam Basu (2012) have presented the computational models to compute readability of Indian language text documents, Accordingly, they tested and validated salient structure features of the text readability of the existing Hindi and Bangla. The researchers Rajendar Namani, Kumar J in their study the researchers used readability existing readability metrics such as Automated Readability Index (ARI), Gunning s Fox Index (FOG) and SMOG programmatically to develop the soft ware for Code readability. They developed prototype application that takes source code as input and applies metric. The metric generates readability statistics. The input code is given to 50 software engineers and asked them to provide the percentage of readability of code. The percentage given by them is compared with the proposed application generated statistics they found to define a new readability metric for measuring readability of source code. 66

18 In their research paper Jayeeta Banerjee, Deepti Majumdar, Madhu Sudan Pal and Dhurjati Majumdar (2011), two types of fonts were used. Serif fonts included Times New Roman (TNR), Georgia and Courier New. Sans serif fonts included Arial, Verdana and Tahoma. They finding of preference for Sans serif than Serif has also received support from the results of overall mental workload. Overall mental workload during reading was significantly least for Verdana 14 point, followed by Arial 14 point. The size combination and over all workload is less of the Sans serif font type significantly less for Sans serif font type and size combination compared with Serif font type and size combination Summary This chapter attempts to review the research studies made in the area of readability in India as well as abroad. Only a fewer studies on this topic could be noticed in India. At the international level several studies have been made. Among the International studies, the researcher has included only the readability studies that have been made in the field of journalism and mass communication in this chapter. The studies on readability in the field of education related to text book preparation have not been included here. 67