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9781137388766

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Anyone concerned about readability formulas will love this book, for it begins by providing a concise summary of the history of this elusive concept and points out the many past accepted fallacies in the efforts to produce grade and age level correlations of materials for children to read and understand, and then points to a more effective way to discover readability. The authors take this quest in an excitingly new direction. Instead of searching for correlations of material written by adults (an odd thought for studying material for children), they search for the answer in the language properties of texts that can impede fluent reading and, equally important, what kinds of knowledge different readers (including children) need in order to unpack the meaning of the text. The book takes the search beyond the purported complexity of words and sentences to a linguistic analysis of the effects of self-embedded structures, branching of relative clauses, ambiguities of various types, the repetition of coherence, and the important but largely overlooked background knowledge of readers, all of which suggest the need for different definitions of fluency and comprehension than have been hitherto advanced. -Roger W. Shuy, Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus, Georgetown University, USA

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Alan Bailin is Professor of Library Services at Hofstra University, USA. He has extensive experience in research and writing about issues related to the communication of information. He has published in journals such as Journal of Academic Librarianship, Language & Communication and Semiotica. With Ann Grafstein he co-authored the book, The Critical Assessment of Research: Traditional and New Methods of Evaluation. Ann Grafstein is Associate Professor of Library Services at Hofstra University, USA. She has extensive experience in research and writing about issues related to the communication of information. She has published in journals such as Journal of Academic Librarianship, Language & Communication and Linguistics. With Alan Bailin she co-authored the book, The Critical Assessment of Research: Traditional and New Methods of Evaluation.

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