Colleagues
There seems to me to be three different issues here:
1) the production of text that can be 'easily' read and understood by persons who, for whatever reason, have difficulties ("People who lack confidence in these crucial skills", as the NIACE leaflet says);
2) the kind of text that students in higher education are/ should be producing (who may be "worried about the complexity of their work..." as Becka puts it).
3) appropriateness of text for intended audience, expressed by Alan as "How can you be confident that you are writing at a level that is appropriate for your audience?"
It also seems to me that the third set of issues subsumes the other two, ie
a) when writing for prospective HE students, and students in their early stages, we should take particular care to ensure 'readability' taking account of the concept of reading age and methods for assessing this when writing for such people (eg using SMOG and other indices);
b) as students progress through higher education, they **should** engage with texts that are more complex, so having higher SMOG, Flesch-Kincaid, etc indices, *and** they **should** be producing texts that are also more complex, because these address issues that themselves are more complex.
To use the newspaper reference in Alan's message, as students progress through HE they should be able to move from Sun, Mail (Mirror) level to that of Guardian/ telegraph/ Times etc.
There are, of course, other factors to take into account. The ability to use punctuation correctly is vital: a student who writes several sections of text running to 50+ words between full stops will get a relatively high SMOG rating simply on sentence length even though the sentences may read as nonsense.
The chain of reasoning is also important: effective writing takes the reader along a path of reasoning, using particular kinds of connecting words/ phrases such as 'because', 'therefore', 'moreover', 'in addition', 'despite', 'nevertheless'. This requires the student-writer to frame their own thinking in such logical structures, and to be able to discern these (or lack of them!) in the writing of others.
And any text exist in relation to other texts, so being able to cite other texts, and to recognise where this is appropriate and why it might be so, is important.
All this suggests that the process of becoming a student, then moving on through to becoming a graduate, is a form of apprenticeship - a social encounter that not well captured by the currently dominant ideology of learnerism and the possessive-instrumentalist view of skills.
Now ... wonder what my SMOG score is ....?
Regards
Len
-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Becka Currant
Sent: 09 May 2009 07:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Fwd: Readability]
I thought this tool was quite interesting and may be of use for students
worried about the complexity of their work...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Readability
Date: 09 May 2009 02:05:51 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Message from Alan Tuckett, Director, NIACE
Dear Colleagues
Did you know that a "typical" editorial in The Sun has a (SMOG)
readability level of under 14, The Daily Express is under 16 but The
Telegraph and The Guardian both score over 17?
How can you be confident that you are writing at a level that is
appropriate for your audience? We have been working with Professor
Colin Harrison at Nottingham University to develop a new tool, which is
now on the NIACE website that will help you to establish the
"readability level" of any text instantly. There is also a downloadable
leaflet which will help you to interpret the readability score given,
and provide more information about how to present text so that it is
easier to read.
You can find both the readability calculator and the leaflet here:
Readability | NIACE
<http://www.niace.org.uk/development-research/readability>
To celebrate ALW we thought you might like to test a small piece of your
writing'
Please also flag it up to colleagues and organisations in your networks.
We are hoping that it will bring users to our website.
Yours sincerely
Alan
/Sent by Alan Tuckett/
/Director/
/NIACE /
--
Becka Currant
Head of Learner Development and Student Engagement
University of Bradford
BD7 1DP
Tel: 01274 236821
Mob: 07917 241214
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://developme.ning.com www.brad.ac.uk/developme www.brad.ac.uk/lss/learnerdevelopment
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