SPANISH READABILITY FORMULAS FOR ELEMENTARY-LEVEL TEXTS: A VALIDATION STUDY

Abstract

Teachers have long used readability formulas to select reading materials for their students at appropriate difficulty levels. Although research has provided little support for the use of these objective formulas, they continue to be used in teacher decision-making. With increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking children with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) in today's classrooms, teachers need guidance for placing students into Spanish text. Can Spanish readability formulas help? This study used two formulas developed for Spanish language text to analyze nine stories that were read by 36 Spanish-speaking second graders with LEP. The oral reading accuracy and oral reading fluency performance of the students were compared to the difficulty levels suggested by the formulas, along with correlations with other objective analyses of the passages. The Spanish readability formulas only weakly predicted student performance, indicating the need to pursue broader, qualitative indices of difficulty for Spanish text.