Abstract:

Readability is the level of easiness and difficulty of understanding texts by the readers. In order to account readability, the formulas, called readability formulas to predict the reading level of texts, are used. Through these formulas, it is aimed to find out if the text is appropriate for the level of readers. The aim of this study is to investigate the applicability of the readability formulas on 4th Grade Science and Technology Text Books and the readability of textbooks. For these purposes, FOG, Flesch-Kincaid, Flesch Ease of Reading Powers-Sumner-Kearl, Coleman-Liau, ARI, Linsear Write, Ateşman and Sönmez formulas were used. These formulas were applied on randomly selected texts from the unit called ‘The Case of Exploring and Knowing The World of Living Creatures’ taught at 4th Grade. Of these readability formulas, only Ateşman and Sönmez’s formulas were observed to be suitable for the Science and Technology textbooks. Besides, it was seen that the unit called ‘The Case of Exploring and Knowing The World of Living Creatures’ was at medium difficulty and understandable. However, it was observed that the other readability formulas were not valid for the assessment of textbook readability due to the differences between the English and Turkish sentence structures and syllables. In this study, the Cloze Test based on Gestalt’s Proximity Principle was applied to a group of 30 students. At the end of the study, it was concluded that the unit called ‘The Case of Exploring and Knowing The World of Living Creatures’ was readable. However, it was revealed that students could encounter some problems while reading the texts, and therefore they could need a reading guide or some professional help to overcome these problems.

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