The Development of a Text Leveling Framework
Author:
Ju-Ling Chen(Center for Teacher Education, National Taitung University), Shin-Ting Tsai(Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University), Yao-Ting Sung(Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University), Yi-Shian Lee(Research Center for Psychological and Educational Testing, National Taiwan Normal University)
Vol.&No.：Vol. 60, No. 1
Date：March 2015
Pages：1-32
DOI：10.6209/JORIES.2015.60(1).01
Abstract：
In this study, reading theories and traditional text leveling systems were integrated and a text leveling framework comprising five aspects (i.e., print features, language and literary features, text structure, content, and diversity), 17 criteria, and 58 indicators was developed. Subsequently, 25 experts in the reading research and reading education fields were invited to assess the importance of these aspects, criteria, and indicators to text leveling. Data were analyzed using the analytic hierarchy process. The results show that content was the most critical aspect influencing text comprehensibility, followed by language and literary features, text structure, diversity, and print features. Overall, the five indicators in this framework with the highest global weight were truthfulness, consistency of perspective, number of perspectives, depth of concepts, and popular culture. Text length exhibited the lowest global weight. The text leveling framework established in this study includes all the major dimensions affecting comprehension and, through objectively quantifying the importance of leveling indicators, provides highly comprehensive text leveling.
Keywords：analytic hierarchy process, leveling, leveling framework, leveling indicator
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