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Is It an “Easy Read”?

Calculating the readability of a text

You have been asked to analyze a piece of writing, considering

(among other things) its readability. How can you calculate the ease

with which it can be read?

Prepared for SSAC byBridget Gold and Rebecca Foster Metropolitan Community College—Longview Kansas City, MO

© The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education. All rights reserved. 2007

Supporting quantitative skillsOrder of operationsText-to-math translationPercents

SSAC2007:PN204.BG&RF2.1

Core quantitative skillBasic arithmetic: ratios

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Slide 3 Statement of the problemSlides 4-7 Three readability formulasSlides 8-9 Create the spreadsheet and enter the dataSlide 10 Compare and analyze the resultsSlide 11 End-of-module assignments

What Is Readability and How Do I Calculate It?

The word “readability” refers to how difficult or easy a text (a piece of writing) is for a reader. Over the last century, many mathematical formulas have been developed to calculate readability. These formulas can’t calculate whether any particular reader will understand the ideas in the text, and they aren’t the only way to determine readability. They do, however, provide a way of looking at quantifiable (measurable) information such as sentence length, word length, and specialized vocabulary. Such formulas are not alike and their results will be different, because they consider different characteristics of the text. Using and comparing several of them, therefore, will give us a better idea of the text’s readability than would any single formula. In this module, you will

• create an Excel spreadsheet to compare three formulas;• enter the math operations for each formula into your spreadsheet;• use the spreadsheet to calculate readability according to the formulas; • use these results to compare the formulas and analyze the text’s readability.

Overview of Module

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You will be given a passage (“Comparing and Contrasting”) and several readability formulas. In order to use the formulas we have selected, you will need to know how to apply each one to the same text. You’ll read through the descriptions of the formulas first, and then you will apply them to a text.

What is the readability level of “Comparing and Contrasting” according to each of the formulas?

The Initial Readability Formulas• The Gunning FOG Index• The Flesch Reading Ease Scale• The FORCAST Readability Formula

Problem

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The Gunning FOG Index

The Gunning FOG Index determines the readability of a text based on sentence length and word length. The result will be a grade-level equivalent (that is, the school grade in which students could be expected to understand the material).

The first step is to tally the total number of words in a text (total word-count).

The second step is to tally the number of sentences.

The third step is to tally the number of words with three or more syllables (long words).

Multiply the ratio of long words to total word-count by 100. Add to that the ratio of the total word-count to the number of sentences. Calculate forty percent of that sum to determine the grade-level equivalent.

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The Flesch Reading Ease Scale

The Flesch Reading Ease Scale determines the readability of a text based on sentence length and average word length in syllables. The result will be a score from 0 (least readable) to 100 (most readable), where 65 represents “plain English” understandable to an adult reader.

The first step is to tally the total number of words in a text.

The second step is to tally the number of sentences.

The third step is to tally the total number of syllables.

Take the ratio of words to sentences, and multiply by 1.015. Take the ratio of syllables to words, and multiply by 84.6. Add

the two products, and subtract the sum from 206.835 to determine the score on the Flesch scale.

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The FORCAST Readability Formula

The FORCAST Readability Formula determines the readability of a text based on the number of one-syllable words in a 150-word passage. The result will be a grade-level equivalent (that is, the school grade in which students could be expected to understand the material).

The first step is to tally the number of words with only one syllable in a 150-word passage.

Find the difference between 20 and ten percent of the number of one-syllable words in the passage to determine the

grade-level equivalent.

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Practice Using the Readability Formulas

Jennifer has a text and wants to determine its readability using the formulas. She has done all her tallying, and her results are as follows:

162 words7 sentences248 total syllables4 words with three or more syllables2 one-syllable words

Her first decision is whether to use a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet. She converts each formula into a calculation she can enter into her scientific calculator.

Try using a calculator. Write out each readability formula into a single-line calculation that you can enter into a scientific calculator. Have your calculation verified, then enter it into the calculator and note your results for comparison later. How easy or difficult is this process?

CAUTION!Why is it important to use a scientific calculator?

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Using Excel Spreadsheets

An Excel spreadsheet is a very efficient tool for using multiple formulas to analyze one or more passages. You will prepare a spreadsheet, collect the data for the formulas using the steps described in Slides 4-6, and enter the data into the spreadsheet.

For information on using Excel, click here. If you are

familiar with Excel, you may click anywhere to

continue to the next slide.

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Practice Using the Readability Formulas

Using the numbers from Jennifer’s text, and the

formulas you were given in slides 4-6, open Excel and re-

create her spreadsheet

Jennifer decides that she’d rather use a spreadsheet, because she suspects that her teacher may ask her to calculate readability for some other text as well. She uses the same numbers, of course:

162 words7 sentences248 total syllables4 words with 3 or more syllables2 1-syllable words

With her Excel Help handout next to her, Jennifer opens Excel and creates her spreadsheet. She entered numbers in the yellow cells, and formulas in the orange cells of column C. Excel used the formulas to calculate the values that you see in the orange cells.

B C2 J ennifer's Text3 No. of words 1624 No. of sentences 75 No. of syllables 2486 No. of 1-syllable words in 150 words 927 No. of words with 3 or more syllables 1489 Gunning Fog Index 1310 Flesch Reading Ease Scale 5411 FORCAST 11

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Axelrod, Rise B. and Charles R. Cooper. "Comparing and Contrasting.” The St. Martin's Guide to Writing, 8th ed.

Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008, 664.

Calculating readability

How readable is the text in a college textbook? Add another column to your spreadsheet with the heading “Compare and Contrast.” Now tabulate the necessary values for the following practice text taken from an English composition text (Axelrod and Cooper, 2008)and determine its readability according to each of the formulas. Then attach your spreadsheet to an email and send it to me.

To make your counting easier, you may use the hard copy you have been given.

Comparing and contrasting make writing more memorable when you analyze and evaluate two or more things. You might compare two people you know well, two motorcycles you are considering buying for a cross-country tour, three Stephen King novels, four tomato plants being grown under different laboratory conditions, or two theories about the relationship between inflation and wages. But as soon as you begin to compare two things, you usually begin to contrast them as well, for rarely are two things alike in all respects. The contrasts, or differences, between the two motorcycles are likely to be more enlightening than the similarities, many of which may be so obvious as to need no analysis. Comparison, then, brings similar things together for examination, to see how they are alike. Contrast is a form of comparison that emphasizes differences. The use of comparison and contrast is more than a writing strategy, of course. It is a way of thinking and learning. According to research on learning, we acquire new concepts most readily if we can see how they are similar to or different from concepts we already know.

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End-of-module assignments

1. Repeat the multi-formula readability analysis with the additional provided texts and one of your own writing samples. (Be sure to submit a copy of your writing sample with your spreadsheet.)

2. What observations do you have based on your work on question 1? 3. Write a brief discussion of the formulas and the characteristics (such as sentence count

or syllable count) they consider. What element or elements do you consider most important in considering readability and why?

4. Translate the following words into single-line calculations for (a) a scientific calculator, and (b) an Excel spreadsheet: thirty percent of the sum of 257 and 982.

5. Using the correct order of operations, rewrite the expression (92+75)(0.06). Don’t evaluate, but show another way to find the same result.

6. Using the correct order of operations, rewrite one of the readability formulas, showing another way to find the same result.

7. Consider the following passage. What would be the significance of calculating its readability with the formulas we have examined?

Orange sheep potato box is sings by. Format tax algebra fishing beard immigrant caftan cites briefcase think calculate of the impression opera. When course events necessary order human people to the max wifi help? Bus table pirate dance climate clock signing art explore geologic era time evolution shampooing rivers in gasoline. The step on the happy dog to an a by of in or for nor and so yet up down in out over my me. I we us you your he she it they them her his our hour plate fork spoon. Table brillig slithy toves gyre gimbal wabe mimsy borogoves si if as Charlie.