Caitlyn Yohn

Dr. Monsour
ED327
7 October 2014
Examination of a Text With Different Readability Techniques
For the purpose of the Cloze procedure, I examined passages from June
Casagrandes It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences. Through conducting
the three different Cloze procedures on the text, I found that the text generally fell into a
tenth or eleventh grade reading level. This was with the exception of the Microsoft Word
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test that skewed the grade level as the test projected that it was
only a mid-eighth grade level text. Casagrande uses some one word sentences and
conversational language throughout the book to make the text more accessible, which I
believe increases the level of readability, but I do not believe the Cloze procedures
accurately provide a picture of the understanding of a text. As easy as the text may be to
read, it is a grammar book filled with concepts to improve writing.
I used this book in a college level class my first year at Seton Hill University, so to
find according to the readability tests that the grade level was so low was shocking, but this
texts content is more difficult than the readability level.
It is important to take small sections in the book at a time because Casagrande
focuses on improving writing. Within the small sections of texts, or even chapters (which
are generally short in the book), students can also create an outline of the main ideas they
gather, which may help boost the comprehension of the text. This simple written outline of
what information the students gathered can help fuel a class or small group discussion to
help with comprehension too. Throughout the pages, Casagrande uses a variety of both
good and bad examples of the different concepts, so if students are confused by
explanations, there are provided examples within the text to help with understanding a
concept.
Although a majority of the words may have a low readability factor, how will the
text be applied in the students writing? The application of the topics in the book is
extremely important, so if the students cannot comprehend the reading, even after dividing
it into smaller sections, then I would need to work on helping them apply the points in the
book to writing by explaining the topics differently. The students would need to read
through the section of text and produce questions they have about anything that was
confusing. What in the text made the student not understand the concepts? Every student
needs to attempt the reading, whether they can fully comprehend it or not because that is
the only way that their reading level will increase, but it is difficult to evaluate students
who allowed frustration to overtake them in the reading process. Because this is a writing
book, an evaluation would need to be looking to see if the students writing has improved
after reading the book. I believe guided small group discussions will also help gauge the
students comprehension of the text. This would need to be heavily monitored, but it may
be easier for students to admit they did not understand a topic to a small group of friends
or peers than an entire class or the teacher.
Below are explanations of each of the three tests conducted on the text and the
discrepancies that are associated with each text. It is important, for the sake of discrepancy,
to complete more than one Cloze procedure on a text.

Frys Readability Graph
To use the Frys Readability Graph to determine the grade level of a text involves
choosing three passages from different parts of the text. Each passage needs to be one
hundred words, unless the passage ends with the first word in a sentence. After
determining where the one hundred-word passage ends, each syllable of the passage needs
to be counted as well as the number of sentences. Upon completing the counting of
syllables and sentences, look at the Frys Readability Graph and plot the point where the
number of syllables and sentences intersect.
Two out of the three passages scored in the high tenth, low eleventh grade range;
however, the third passage scored in the seventh grade level.
The discrepancy with the Frys Readability Graph is that the syllables of words do
not constitute the difficulty of them. Determining the grade level of a text strictly off of the
readability graph would cause difficulty in the reading. There are many common
multisyllabic words and there are also many difficult one-syllable words. The number of
syllables to sentences can simply not accurately determine the readability level.

Microsoft Word Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
The checker in Microsoft Word examines the average number of words per
sentences to determine the readability. First, the passage needs to be typed into a Word
document. Highlight the passage and open the Spelling and Grammar tool. This tool will
provide the average number of words per sentence as well as the Flesch-Kincaid Grade
Level.
Completing this Cloze procedure, the passage I selected was rated at a high eighth
grade level.
There is discrepancy with this procedure because of the extreme variation in
sentence length, especially with the book I chose. I have a range of sentence length from
long to one-word sentences. The one-word sentences decrease the average and lower the
grade level of the text.

Gunning Fog Index
The Gunning Fog Index determines the readability based upon the number of
sentences and big words, which are words that are three or more syllables. First, the
number of sentences is divided into the number of syllables from the passage. Then one
needs to determine the number of big words in the passage. Divide the number of big
words by one hundred to get a percentage. Add the quotient from the number of syllables
and sentences and the percentage of big words together to get a sum. Multiply this sum
by .4 to receive a grade level of the text.
After completing the Gunning Fog Index mathematics for one of the passages in the
book, the result was that the passage is at a mid-ninth grade reading level.
The discrepancy with the Gunning Fog Index procedure is the amount of big words
found in the passage. There can be a large number of big words in the passage, but the
large number does not necessarily mean that the reading is difficult. There are so many big
words that are common to people such as hamburger that determining the readability
based on this fact is not clear.