| The present study sought to find out whether word list indices (WLIs) obtained from reading passages for Grades 1 and 2 were related to two kinds of variables; countable indicators of sentence and word length, and student reading performance scores of oral reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension.;Findings indicated that the fine discrimination this study intended to achieve (i.e., among passages with a restricted range of WLIs) did not produce results supportive of the predictive power of the chosen word list approach. These findings may be in part explained by two main limitations associated with the present study: the restricted range of student reading skills, and the constrained range of passage text difficulty per analysis conducted.;Future research will likely continue to explore the quality of WLIs for predicting readability, since vocabulary complexity continues to be considered a critical factor associated with text difficulty (Dale & Chall, 1948; Goni & Arnaiz, 1995; Harris & Jacobson, 1976; Spache, 1953; Spaulding, 1951, 1956). In so doing, future research endeavors could benefit from approaches that aim to distinguish among reading materials representing a fair range of text difficulty levels (i.e., across grade levels rather than within grade level). In addition, future research will need to continue to seek validation of new readability approaches on student reading performance, the ultimate validation criterion against which readability approaches should be judged (Parker et al., 2001). |
