Scientific Texts

CPD: Literacy in Science for Teachers (by Amanda Fleck), topic 3.1.2

Readability of Scientific Texts

The readability of science texts is generally high. This is due to the frequency of polysyllabic words and complex sentence structure.

You can check the readability of any text using the readability statistics option on Microsoft Word.
Copy text from a source into a word document:
→ go to review → press spelling and grammar → select options → select show readability statistics → complete the spell check as normal → a pop-up window will show the Flesch Kincaid reading ease.

A typical page from a biology topic in a KS3 textbook will have:
Around 900 words and 3000 characters.
FK readability of 71.1, i.e easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students.
A glossary of keywords for a Y7 biology topic on reproduction will have:
Around 500 words, 4000 characters, 6 paragraphs and 56 sentences.
FK readability of 63, i.e. understood by 15- to 17-year-old students, bu fairly difficult to read.

Shared reading can be used to model how to successfully read scientific texts.
Text is on a slide/visualiser and students and teacher look at it together.
Teacher gives an overview of the text and techniques used.
Specialist vocabulary is taught before reading and is highlighted in the text.
Teacher reads the text aloud, encouraging students to follow.
Features of the text are highlighted and annotated by teachers and students (e.g. type, purpose, audience, voice, language).

Five texts are analysed with the Flesch Kincaid reading ease test. Which of the following scores represents the hardest to read text?
Five texts are analysed with the Flesch Kincaid reading ease test. Which of the following scores represents the easiest to read text?