READING, READABILITY, AND THE ESL READER

This study reports the results of research to determine whether readability formulas developed for the measuring of reading difficulty for native English readers are applicable to the measuring of readability for English as a second language learners. The specific purpose of this study was to determine if four widely used readability formulas (the Flesch formula, the Dale-Chall formula, the Fry Graph, and the Lorge formula) measured reading difficulty for ESL students enrolled in intensive English centers in the United States in preparation for academic work.;The Spearman rank order correlation coefficient was used to measure the correlation between the cloze test results of ESL students on a series of passages known as the Miller-Coleman Readability Scale and the readability formula results of those same passages. The findings were presented in four parts: (a) the cloze difficulty index and standard deviation of the reading passages based on results of the cloze tests; (b) the difficulty index of the same passages using the four different readability formulas; (c) the relationship between the cloze difficulty index and the difficulty index of each readability formula; and (d) a method to enable teachers to match a student to appropriate reading material given a known TOEFL score and a known readability level for a passage or text.;From analysis of the data, it was determined that a correlation did exist between the rank orders of the passages as measured by the cloze scores of the ESL students and by the readability formulas, and that this correlation was meaningful.;According to the data of the sample, it now seems possible to state that the four readability formulas and graphs used in this study do measure readability of ESL students and that they can be used to select material appropriate to the reading level of ESL students.