A sea change occurred in text characteristics used in reading textbooks between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Textbook programs for beginning and developing readers that had been controlled by readability formulas were replaced by children’s literature (Hoffman et al., 1994). With the use of literature in textbook programs rather than controlled texts, the number of total words in texts decreased while the number of unique words increased (Hoffman et al., 1994). Authors of children’s literature tend to limit the plots and story length of books for children, but children’s literature contains substantially more rare words than either earlier school texts or typical adult conversations (Hayes, Wolfer, & Wolfe, 1996). By the late 1990s, several states were calling for textbook reform. Texas (Texas Education Agency, 1997) and California (California English/Language Arts Committee, 1999) mandated that reading textbook programs purchased with state monies include decodable texts.
Hiebert, E.H., and Fisher, C.W. (2002, May). Text matters in developing fluent reading. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Reading Association, San Francisco, CA
So far, so good...but:
Several years after these mandates, literature continued to dominate textbook programs beyond the first semester of first grade (Hiebert, 2001). Further, first-grade texts continued to feature high numbers of unique words, many of which appear a single time (Foorman, Francis, Davidson, Harm, & Griffin, 2002).
Hiebert, E.H., and Fisher, C.W. (2002, May). Text matters in developing fluent reading. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Reading Association, San Francisco, CA
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