Craft and StructureVery hardTwo views on measuring reading difficulty
Craft and Structure practice question
Text 1
Readability formulas — scoring sentence length and syllable counts — let publishers match texts to readers objectively: a score places any passage on a grade-level scale without a single subjective judgment.
Text 2
Hand a 'sixth-grade-level' passage about baseball to weak readers who love the game and strong readers who have never seen an inning, and the weak readers out-comprehend the strong. What the formulas cannot count — knowledge the reader brings — routinely swamps what they can.
Which choice best describes the relationship between the texts?
- A. Text 2 argues that the formulas Text 1 endorses miss the main determinant of a text's difficulty for a given reader.Correct
- B. Text 2 recommends making sentences longer to improve comprehension.
- C. Both texts agree that word length is the best predictor of difficulty.
- D. Text 1 concerns children's books, while Text 2 concerns technical manuals.
Answer: A. Text 2 argues that the formulas Text 1 endorses miss the main determinant of a text's difficulty for a given reader.
Text 1 trusts sentence- and word-length formulas; Text 2 counters that background knowledge dominates — a short sentence on an unfamiliar topic can defeat a reader whom long sentences on familiar ground do not.
Why the other answers are wrong
- B. Text 2 recommends making sentences longer to improve comprehension.
- Text 2 never advises longer sentences; it relocates difficulty to knowledge.
- C. Both texts agree that word length is the best predictor of difficulty.
- Only Text 1 endorses length-based measures; Text 2 disputes their sufficiency.
- D. Text 1 concerns children's books, while Text 2 concerns technical manuals.
- Neither text is restricted to a genre; the baseball study involves general readers.
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