Text Complexity and the Early Grades: The Fuss and How Recent Research Can Help (original) (raw)
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Examining text complexity in the early grades
Phi Delta Kappan, 2016
The Common Core raises the stature of texts to new heights, creating a hubbub. The fuss is especially messy at the early grades, where children are expected to read more complex texts than in the past. But early-grades teachers have been given little actionable guidance about text complexity. The authors recently examined early-grades texts to discover what makes them complex and now report that there is a lot that can help teachers, specifically, young children’s texts are special, a handful of text characteristics can signal text-complexity level, sometimes the interplay of text characteristics modulates text-complexity level, and knowing why a text is complex can facilitate text selection.
Important Text Characteristics for Early-Grades Text Complexity
The Common Core set a standard for all children to read increasingly complex texts throughout schooling. The purpose of the present study was to explore text characteristics specifically in relation to early-grades text complexity. Three-hundred-fifty primary-grades texts were selected and digitized. Twenty-two text characteristics were identified at four linguistic levels, and multiple computerized operationalizations were created for each of the 22 text characteristics. A researcher-devised text-complexity outcome measure was based on: teacher judgment of text complexity in the 350 texts; and text complexity as gauged from student responses using a maze task for a subset of the 350 texts. Analyses were conducted using a logical analytical progression typically used in machine-learning research. Random forest regression was the primary statistical modeling technique. Nine text characteristics were most important for early-grades text complexity including word structure (decoding demand and number of syllables in words), word meaning (age of acquisition, abstractness, and word rareness), and sentence and discourse-level characteristics (intersentential complexity, phrase diversity, text density/information load, and non-compressibility). Notably, interplay among text characteristics was important to explanation of text complexity, particularly for subsets of texts.
Text Complexity: Primary Teachers’ Views
Literacy Research and Instruction, 2014
The research question was, “What text characteristics do primary teachers think are most important for early grades text complexity?” Teachers from across the United States accomplished a two-part task. First, to stimulate teachers’ thinking about important text characteristics, primary teachers completed an online paired-text comparison task. While doing the task, teachers were asked to decide which texts in pairs were more complex, and they were also asked to think about which text characteristics mattered most for their decisions. Next, teachers completed a questionnaire, with primary focus on the text characteristics teachers thought mattered most for early grades text complexity. The teachers emphasized word decodability, word frequency, pictures, and word meanings, and they also referenced other characteristics. Their outlook has implications for implementation of the Common Core Standard on text complexity for young children learning to read.
Reading Research Quarterly, 2012
In this conceptual essay, we offer rationales and evidence for critical components of a working model of text complexity for the early grades. In the first three sections of the article, we examine word-level, syntax-level, and discourse-level features of text, posing questions for future research. In the fourth section, we address elements of text treatments—the collection of texts with which beginning readers will interact longitudinally over the course of their early literacy development. This conceptual essay provides a unified treatment of the complexities of early grade text through the introduction of a theoretical framework, assimilating the extant research into a theory of early grade text and delineating a theoretical and empirical strategy for transforming the framework into a mature model.
Understanding the New Demands for Text Complexity in American Secondary Schools
Fundamentals of Literacy Instruction and Assessment, 7-12., 2014
The challenges of identifying and addressing the features that contribute to text difficulty have become more pressing as schools begin to use the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to shape their instruction. Indeed, the major focus of the CCSS English Language Arts (ELA) standards is that, over their school careers, students encounter and become more proficient at reading increasingly complex text. This chapter will explore text complexity and the rationale for the CCSS focus on text complexity. Three overall approaches for determining text complexity are presented.
Text Complexity and the Common Core
The Utah Journal of Literacy, 2013
An electronic interview with The Utah Journal of Literacy that also includes quotations from Hiebert's writings. Hiebert discusses her concerns regarding text complexity and teachers' identification and selection of texts for their students that fall within the Lexile bands identified by the Common Core recommendations. Hiebert notes that readability formulas can be a starting point, but by themselves do not adequately measure a text's complexity which can be affected by the knowledge demands of the content and the text's structure. Hiebert provides recommendations for teachers on how to identify texts that appropriately illustrate the progression and growth that is expected of students at particular grade levels. Hiebert also discusses the need for teachers to help students develop their reading stamina, vocabulary, and engagement with texts.
Readability and the Common Core’s Staircase of Text Complexity
Text Matters, 2012
For a long time, educators have asked questions about what makes a text complex. Why is it harder for students to read some books than others? How are we to help students select texts that will challenge them without frustrating them? What type of texts will increase their reading achievement most effectively? By adding text complexity as a dimension of literacy, the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS/ELA; Common Core State Standards Initiative , 2010) bring these questions to the fore. To establish text complexity , the standards propose a three-pronged system: 1. qualitative analyses of features such as levels of meaning (e.g., readers need to make inferences to understand a character's motive); 2. reader-task variables such as readers' background knowledge of a text's topic and ways in which teachers and situations influence readers' interactions with a text (e.g., an audio of a book or the level of teacher guidance); and 3. quantitative i...
Reading Research Quarterly, 2022
The Common Core State Standards emphasize the need for U.S. students to read complex texts. As a result, the level of word complexity for primary‐level texts is important, particularly the dimensions of and changes in complexity between first grade and the important third‐grade high‐stakes testing year. In this study, we addressed word complexity in these grades by examining its dimensions and differences in the texts in three widely used U.S. reading programs. Fourteen measures of word complexity were computed, and exploratory factor analysis established that four dimensions—orthography, length, familiarity, and morphology—characterized word complexity. As expected, the third‐grade texts have more complex words than the first‐grade texts have in the four dimensions, with the greatest differences in length and familiarity. More surprisingly, the words in the first‐grade texts increase in complexity over the year, but overall, the words in the third‐grade texts do not. Polysyllabic words are common in texts in both grades, comprising 48% of unique words in first‐grade texts and 65% in third‐grade texts. Polymorphemic words comprise 13% of unique first‐grade words and 19% of third‐grade words (for derived words, 3% and 6%, respectively, of all words). Results show that word complexity changes markedly between grades as expected, not only in length and familiarity but also in syllabic and morphemic structure. Implications for instruction and future word complexity analyses are discussed.
Examining Three Assumptions About Text Complexity: Standard 10 of the Common Core State Standards
Whose Knowledge Counts in Government Literacy Policies?, 2013
In this chapter we consider three assumptions about the view of text complexity as operationalized by the CCSS. We are concerned that these assumptions, if left unexamined, could increase the achievement gap as they become part of state and national policies. At the outset, we emphasize that we support strongly the goal of increased reading of complex texts and accompanying reading practices. A complex view of text complexity, however, is needed to ensure that appropriate texts and instruction are provided to students in order to increase their capacity to engage with complex texts. Before addressing the three assumptions and their potential consequences, we describe why text complexity is included as a distinct standard within the CCSS.