The second article:  Toward a Theoretical Model of Text Complexity for the Early Grades: Learning From the Past, Anticipating the Future

Here is my summary of the text complexity article. Essentially, the authors have begun a working model of text complexity for early readers and have pointed out the need for continued research in this area. This is my take on their research article.

Text complexity is defined separately from text difficulty. This distinction implies independent variables relative to complexity, where textual elements can be studied and manipulated. Difficulty, on the other hand, cannot be manipulated because it's dependent on the reader. Who's to say what is difficult? This article focuses on text, not digital reading, by the way.

The RRSG model (the RAND Reading Study Group) shows four variables that surround text complexity: the reader, the activity, the text, and the sociocultural context within which the reading's being done. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, coming together to form a rough model to begin to understand text complexity. There are interactions among and between the elements in the model, which makes it tricky to interpret.

Early-grade texts have been studied, primarily from the perspective of structural complexity and word familiarity. Structural complexity refers to elements of a word that  influence its difficulty in decoding it. Word familiarity refers to the degree to which a word might be known, both in recognition and meaning.

However, these researchers have identified other areas that contribute to overall text complexity. One of these areas is the semantic features of words, which has been less studied. Semantic features refers to vocabulary children know. Imageability is a compensatory strategy where a child imagines or visualizes the word, making it easier to know and remember. Vocabulary research overlaps with this area of reading and text.

Syntax is another area in text that should be studied more closely in the early-grades. This relates to a child's understanding of sentences, a basic level of reading comprehension. There are different ways to measure sentence length (T-unit is one such way), but beyond measuring sentences and checking syntactic meaning, the researchers admit there's still much to learn about syntactic processing.

Discourse structure, which includes cohesion, genre, and text length, is another way to measure text complexity. Cohesion refers to argument repetition. The more frequently words, phrases, and ideas are repeated, the more cohesive, and easier, the text is to read. Cohesion is required of readers to varying degrees, depending on their reading ability and comprehension. Genre is not defined in one particular way. There is no agreement about the types or numbers of genres in text. Therefore, genre is difficult to measure. However, the researchers of this article believe genre plays a role in text complexity. Text length may contribute to text complexity as well but it's hard to measure also.

In addition to examining the components of text itself, the researchers examine the interaction of features and design principles in early-grade text programs. This is another area believed to affect text complexity as well. The "diet of texts," as the authors term it, represents the texts that are selected and presented to young children by school systems and teachers. In examining program design, there are four learning principles: content, sequence, pace, and repetition. These principles directly affect whether young readers will gain meaning from text, and they contribute to the complexity of text.

Finally, the authors present numerous questions for future research endeavors, in all areas mentioned above. They feel strongly that early-grade text complexity is an area in reading research that has been neglected and deserves further study.

QUESTIONS

My questions are rather random, derived as I read and studied this article. You may or may not have similar questions, and you may or may not opt to respond to these.


1.  How did these researchers know where to start to study text complexity?

2.  How did they determine the factors that comprise text complexity? That is, are there other factors they did not take into consideration? How did they decide on the ones highlighted in the article?

3.  How many iterations are needed before a mature model of text complexity is created and accepted by scholars?

4.  Where do background knowledge, neuroscience (genetics), and other outside factors come into play in this model?