Limits to Task Analysis

This method of analysis was not designed for informational reading, or reading-tolearn. Our ability to gain knowledge from reading depends to a great extent on existing knowledge, learning strategies, and our purpose for the learning. Not everyone will get the same information from the same textbook; learning is a fairly individual undertaking. Reading-to-do tasks, on the other hand, have cognitive characteristics that can be described and rated for complexity. Literacy tasks have set starting points and require a series of steps to arrive at the intended outcome.

For the purpose of this discussion of literacy, we will ignore the question of whether something is easy or difficult to read in isolation. We will only consider reading difficulty in relation to the purpose or task behind the reading. To sum up, we will not ask “Is this difficult reading?’ but rather “How complex is the task of getting this piece of information from this particular written source?”

Be aware of the limits to accuracy. Whenever we ‘quantify’ some feature of experience, the numbers take on a life of their own. To gauge the complexity of literacy tasks you will be given some ‘predictive’ tools that will give an estimate of their complexity levels. Remember that these tools are generally ‘rules of thumb’ capable of refining our guesses to the nearest level at best. The actual literacy difficulty level can only be determined by statistical analysis of numerous trials made by a sample population (this is what Kirsch and Mosenthal, and others, have done).

A list of published sources for this document can be found in the bibliography. Readers are encouraged to delve into these original documents for further insight into the complexity of literacy tasks.

Background Needed

For readers not familiar with the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), some background reading is suggested. Critical to understanding this Guide are the literacy definitions, literacy complexity levels, and item analysis factors used in the IALS study. A good introduction to IALS methodology is provided in the first of the IALS reports Literacy, Economy and Society (Statistics Canada, 95).

Many readers will find the subject of ‘document literacy’ unfamiliar. They are encouraged to delve into any of the source documents listed in the bibliography for an introduction to document complexity and list structures. The article describing the PMOSE/IKIRSH document complexity scale (Mosenthal and Kirsch, 98) is a very readable overview..

Literacy task analysis also depends on describing and analyzing language. Readers should be familiar with descriptive grammar and able to identify sentences, paragraphs, clauses, phrases, pronouns, and other structural features of text.