Readability of Community College Textbooks and the Reading Ability of the Students Who Use Them

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Abstract
Using Nelson-Denny test scores of 279 students (80 percent of the freshman class) of a mid-Missouri community college and matching them against the Dale-Chall readability levels of seventeen textbooks used in classes by those students, the author found that eleven of the seventeen textbooks were written above the reading levels of 50 percent of the students. Perhaps the most significant finding of the study was that 52 percent of the students in all the classes had a reading ability below the textbooks used in the respective classes. He recommends that community college faculties place textbook readability high among the criteria in textbook selection; that where a wide range of reading abilities exists, two or three texts written at different levels of difficulty be adopted; that faculties look to nonprint materials to augment and clarify textual material; and that community colleges without them seek to establish reading and study skills programs.

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