Student Achievement Division Student Achievement Division WHAT WORKS? Research into Practice Assessing Text Difficulty for Students

• Main Author: Dr Sharon Murphy
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1053.4336; http://www2.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_ATDS.pdf

A research-into-practice series produced by a partnership between the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat and the Ontario Association of Deans of Education Can teachers anticipate which texts will be too difficult or too easy for students? Research Tells Us • A range of factors contributes to how difficult or easy a text will be for a reader at any one time. • Some of these factors relate to the surface features of the text such as sentence length and vocabulary. • Other factors relate to deeper features of the text such as ideation and representational modes. • Still, other factors reside in the relationship between a text and a reader. • The interplay of these factors determines a text's readability. SHARON MURPHY is a professor in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto. Prior to her appointment at York, Sharon taught special education in the school system in Newfoundland and Labrador. Sharon's current research and writing focuses on assessment and literacy. The Student Achievement Division is committed to providing teachers with current research on instruction and learning. The opinions and conclusions contained in these monographs are, however, those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies, views, or directions of the Ontario Ministry of Education or the Student Achievement Division.