Difficult texts and the students who choose them: The role of text difficulty in second graders' text choices and independent reading experiences

This dissertation describes a study of the relationships between text difficulty, reading comprehension, and reading motivation for a sample of second grade students (n = 70). The study was designed to explore and describe the reading experiences of students who chose to read texts that would commonly be considered too difficult to be read independently. In particular, the study sought to find out more about students' reasons for choosing difficult texts, their comprehension of those texts, and their affective experiences with reading the difficult texts they chose for themselves.;The study focused on students' reading during self-selected, independent reading time in the general education classroom. Five second grade classes participated in the study. Data sources included group assessments of reading ability and reading motivation, student logs of reading choices, individual assessments of reading comprehension and oral reading accuracy, and student interviews. Parallel measures based on students' experiences reading independent-level texts were used as points of comparison. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to test existing hypotheses; explore relationships between reading comprehension, text difficulty, and motivation to read; and construct some illustrative descriptions of students' reading experiences with their chosen texts.;One important finding was that the standard criterion of oral reading accuracy, originated by Betts (1946) and advocated by others, is too high for second grade readers. Another finding was that oral reading accuracy and reading comprehension were not consistently related, showing a statistically significant but weak correlation. The results of this study also suggest that the term "frustration level" may be somewhat of a misnomer, as no relationship was found between a student's oral reading performance and her enjoyment of a text. Half of the students in the sample were identified as having chosen at least one frustration-level text during the data collection period, indicating that the practice of choosing difficult texts is quite common. The students who chose frustration-level texts were more likely to be struggling readers, but they did not differ significantly from students who did not choose frustration-level texts in terms of perceptions of themselves as readers or beliefs about the value of reading. Another finding was that students rarely mentioned the perceived difficulty of a text as a reason for choosing it. Students' perceptions of text difficulty were relatively accurate, although students were much more aware of their difficulties reading individual words than they were of their difficulties understanding the text as a whole. Finally, students' enjoyment of texts was not statistically significantly related to their perceptions of text difficulty.;The results of this study have some important implications. They point toward the need for a reevaluation of the assessment methods and placement criteria that are commonly used to place students in texts by matching student reading ability with text readability. This study also suggests a need to think more critically about the concept of text difficulty as a construct used both in research and in practice.