http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/ Janice Harayda Reviews Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry for Adults and Children Mon, 20 May 2013 13:35:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-7988 Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:34:48 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-7988 The author should know that the reading-grade level of a text has little to do with its importance or meaning. Dr. Seuss, the author of some of the most famous children’s books of all time, was a fan of Flesh’s Reading Ease formula. He wrote consistently at a first grade level. National literacy surveys show that the average reader in the U.S. is an adult of limited reading ability, with almost half reading below the 9th-grade level, that’s 108 million adults. Most high-school graduates read at the 9th-grade level, college graduates at the 10th-grade level. The best speeches of out nation’s history were written at the 8th-grade level, including Lincoln’s Gettysburg and Second Inauguration addresses. Nearly all today’s blockbuster novels are written at the 7th-grade level, including Dan Brown, Harper Lee, J. K. Rowling, and John Grisham. reading experts have long held that for best learning and reading efficiency for adults and children, they should have available texts within two grades of their reading levels, For too long, we have equated writing excellence with text difficulty. The first thing to remember when addressing an audience is to match the text with their reading skills.

]]> http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-7772 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:42:19 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-7772 [...] prize has been dumbed down in recent years, and analyses the reading level of some former winners here . Makes for interesting reading, and hopefully she will update it to reflect this year’s [...]

]]> http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-7771 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:52:21 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-7771 [...] reading level. If you’d like a bit of background on tomorrow night’s ceremony, you may want to look at the disheartening reading levels of a roundup of some of the best-known winners and [...]

]]> http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-4398 Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:36:54 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-4398 [...] tI did come across a blog (or blit if you don’t like the hard g) I haven’t seen before: One Minute book Reviews by author Janice [...]

]]> http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-4305 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:10:42 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-4305 [...] in the mix at PopMatters, and this morning on the Re:Print blog I discuss Janice Harayda’s use of Word’s “readability” statistics to evaluate a Booker Prize finalist, Mister Pip.  (Harayda is the former books editor at the [...]

]]> http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-4302 Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:22:23 +0000 http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/dumbing-down-the-man-booker-prize-finalist-lloyd-jones-writes-at-a-third-grade-level-in-%e2%80%98mister-pip%e2%80%99-microsoft-word-readability-stats-show/#comment-4302 [...] Read the rest of Harayda’s post here. [...]

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