Readability

Question: Is sentence length a valid indicator of difficulty in reading?

Answer/Quote: “Looking at a sentence and getting an intuitive feeling about its difficulty by counting words and analyzing the elements which are included in it may be considered a quick and easy way to assess the linguistic difficulty of the language in the reading materials.” P. 487.

Comment: I’m not sure what the implications are if one judges the sentences in a reading passage to be difficult—other than to tell students to slow down when reading long sentences in order to comprehend them. RayS.

Title: “Is Sentence Length a Valid Measure of Difficulty in Readability Formulas?” SM Glazer. The Reading Teacher (February 1974), 464-468.