Welcome

Words of Wisdom

No one should teach who is not in love with teaching.

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Vocabulary Club

Vocabulary Club

• Aim: to expand members' active English vocabulary in a systematic but informal way

• Both students and faculty welcome

• Once a week for 45 minutes in the LEP

• Sharing new words members have learned

• New vocabulary reinforced through activities and vocabulary games

• Members benefiting from the outset

Reading Comprehension

Find it on the blog

Reading Comprehension Skills Presentation

rcspresentation.blogspot.com

On the blog you will find …

• PowerPoint presentation (but in PDF)

• Readability statistics for Well Read 1-4

• 16 texts from Well Read 1-4, downloadable and editable

• 3 experimental texts of my own devising (lower levels)

• 2 additional texts for readability tests (J.K. Rowling, Steve Jobs)

Blog Contents (contd)

• My introduction and continuity commentary

• Full results of my 3 investigations into

o Readability of texts

o Students’ perception of reading

o Correlation between time taken to complete reading comprehension test,

and test result

Downloadable and editable

• All the documents embedded in the blog except for the PowerPoint presentation (which is in PDF) are downloadable and editable in either Microsoft Word [2013] or Microsoft Excel [2013], depending on the format they were uploaded in.

• PowerPoint format of presentation obtainable on removable disk.

Screenshot of blog

My approach / philosophy

• Reading Comprehension Skills (appropriate course title)

• Subtitle: A course in thinking

• Getting students to think about the course

in a certain way

• Opening up the texts for students

Readability Tests

• Designed to gauge the understandability of a contemporary English academic text.

• Among other things, they produce an approximate representation of the number of years of formal education someone needs to comprehend the text.

• However, they give several additional and very useful statistics e.g. lexical density = a measure of the proportion of the content (lexical) words over the total words.

Some Readability Tests

• Automated Readability Index

• Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease & Grade Level Tests

• Gunning Fog Index

• SMOG Index

• Fry Readability Formula

• Coleman-Liau Index

Word of caution

• These tests DO NOT necessarily produce the same results.

• You can run different tests on the same text but ultimately have to settle for one or two of them and base your decisions on that.

• The important thing is to achieve an internal consistency in your test findings.

Whole text or part thereof

• You can run the tests on an entire text or parts thereof

• This could help you determine the level of difficulty of the questions based on a particular part.

• (Check if average of individual results correspond with comprehensive result)

Readability Tests

• Online• Offline

Offline: Microsoft Word 2013 [Flesch Reading Ease & Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Tests]

Readability tests - online

• Readability-Score.com

https://readability-score.com/

• Readability Formulas

http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php

Text Content Analysis Tool

A very useful tool that you could use in conjunction with any of the standard readability tests. More about this tool later in this presentation.

How to enable Readability Statistics in Microsoft Word 2013

With a Microsoft Word document open:

1. Click on File.

2. Click on Options.

3. Click on Proofing.

4. Select both “Check grammar with spelling” and “Show readability statistics”.

5. Click “OK”.

Running the Test in MS Word 2013

Run a grammar and spell check.

Once completed, the statistics will come up.

Important:

You have to run the grammar and spell check first. That’s where the readability test gets its statistics from.

Sample Readability Statistics

Understanding F-K Readability Scores

Flesch Reading Ease Test

This test rates text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. For most standard files, you want the score to be between 60 and 70.

Understanding F-K Readability Scores

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Test

This test rates text on a U.S. school grade level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can understand the document. For most documents, aim for a score of approximately 7.0 to 8.0.

F-K widely used

• The F-K formula was first used by the U.S. Army for assessing the difficulty of technical manuals in 1978.

• Soon became the Department of Defense military standard.

• Pennsylvania: car insurance policies must be written at a maximum of ninth grade level (14-15 years of age). This is now a common requirement in many other states and for legal documents e.g. insurance policies.

Text Content Analysis Tool

http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/text-statistics.php

Text Statistics 1(Text Content Analysis Tool)

Text Statistics 2(Text Content Analysis Tool)

Text Statistics 3(Text Content Analysis Tool)

Word Frequency Cloud (Text Content Analysis Tool)

Word Frequency Cloud (Text Content Analysis Tool)

Related Investigation

• A fascinating related investigation would be into the readability of listening comprehension texts, and investigating a possible correlation between the level of reading comprehension difficulty, on the one hand, and the level of listening comprehension difficulty, on the other.

Analysis of Well Read 1-4 texts

Readability statistics for 16 Well Read 1-4 texts

• Readability statistics (handouts)

• Flesch-Kincaid grade level ranges for 4 texts at each level. Pay particular attention to the extent of the overlaps.

• Complete statistics on the blog

• Also on the blog, the texts of the 16 texts, downloadable and editable, should you want to run your own tests.

Practical implications / utility

• Eliminating guesswork in choosing texts for quizzes and exams

• Moving outside of, and beyond, the text book

• CHOOSING TEXTS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY (VOLUNTARY) READING ASSIGNMENTS AND QUIZZES

The Well Read series we’re using is (1) dated, (2) monochrome, (3) mono-technological, and (4) all non-fiction.

Practical Implications (ctd)

• Papers submitted for publication

• Speeches

Experimental texts

• Uploaded to blog (embedded)

• Three texts

(1) Poem [on friendship]

(2) Humorous quotes

(3) Did you know? [interesting information]

Each with readability statistics and possible questions.

Words of Wisdom

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

Anatole France

Find it on the blog

Reading Comprehension Skills Presentation

rcspresentation.blogspot.com

Survey (anonymous)

(Complete statistics on the blog)

Questionnaire – Reading 1

On a scale from 0 – 10:

Q1 How much do you enjoy reading Arabic?

Q2 How much did you enjoy reading English before this course started?

Q3 How much do you enjoy reading English now?

0 = hate(d) it; 10 = love(d) it

Results/findings

• Two sections (7201, 7203)

• 16 + 21 = 37 students

• Figures in columns 1-3 express relative like/dislike

• Percentage in column 4 expresses the increase/decrease when comparing (a) students’ enjoyment of reading English before the course started to (b) their enjoyment of reading English midway through the course

Results / findings

Q1 Q2 Q3%

inc/dec68.38 56.49 73.78 +17.30

Duration/grade correlation

Duration/grade correlation

• Correlation between time taken to complete test, and test results?

• Reading 1, sections 7201 and 7203, midterm 1

• Objective test (multiple choice, T/F, fill in the blanks)

• 1 hour

• 3 segments: first 30 minutes, next 15 minutes, final 15 minutes

Results / findings

• Top scorers: 85 and above

• Extended the analysis to 2 sections of Writing 1, for comparison

• Complete statistics on blog

Results / findings – Reading 1(two sections)

Composite - Reading

Segment

Segment

Segment

      1 2 3Average of top scorers (%) 98 91 93Average of non-top scorers (%) 75 70 66Average of all scorers (%) 95 80 71

Results / findings – Writing 1(two sections)

Composite - WritingSegme

ntSegme

ntSegme

nt

      1 2 3Average of top scorers (%) 95 94 93Average of non-top scorers (%) 0 57 66Average of all scorers (%) 95 73 74

Comparative Results

Composite - Reading/Writing

Segment

Segment

Segment

1 2 3Ave. top scorers (%) R 98 91 93

W 95 94 93

Ave. n/top scorers (%) R 75 70 66

W 0 57 66

Aver. all scorers (%) R 95 80 71

W 95 73 74

Words of Wisdom

I'm afraid I have an incurable urge for teaching.

Antonio Munoz Molina

Find it on the blog

Reading Comprehension Skills Presentation

rcspresentation.blogspot.com

Conclusion