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Subject:Re: Word lists for reading levels? Vocabulary!? From:Peter Trumper <trumper -at- BIDDEFORD -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 25 Nov 1996 08:28:09 -0500
>Kris wrote :
>> The discussion (on TECHWR-L) of Latinisms prompts me to ask:
>> Does anyone have access to a reference that lists the reading level (for
>> example, 8th grade, 10th grade, etc.) for words?
>The Flesch-Kincaid index is designed to assess a written text on the basis
>of the number of syllables per word and the number of words per sentence,
>according to the following formula :
>0.39 (average words per sentence) + 11.8 (average syllables per word) -
>15.59
Determining the reading level in part by counting the number of syllables
in a word seems overly simplistic. Surely there is a vocabulary list out
there of common words generally understood by people at a given reading
level. I, for one, have no idea what words (short *or* long) today's 8th
grader is likely to know. Making the sentence structure more readable is
certainly important, but that's not so hard for writers and editors to do.
