|
What Makes Literacy Tasks Complex?
The various studies
of literacy ability undertaken over the last twenty years, and the analysis
that followed them, reveal that the difficulty of literacy tasks can be
attributed to the factors shown in Figure 2 below. A discussion of these
complexity factors follows:
|
Structural Complexity (Materials) |
| |
| |
Readability of Prose |
|
| |
Document complexity |
- Number of labels
-
Number of specific items
|
| |
|
Complexity of Process (Strategies) |
| |
| |
Prose
and Document |
- Type
of information requested
-
Type of match
-
Plausibility of distractors
|
| |
Quantitative |
- Operation specificity
-
Type of calculation
|
|
Figure 2 - Overview of Literacy
Task Complexity Factors
Structural Complexity of Materials
Readability of Prose
While the
readability of prose has often been identified as a key factor in the
complexity of literacy tasks, it is only weakly correlated with IALS complexity
levels. In fact, many of the more difficult questions on IALS, and on studies
carried out in the United States, were asked of prose selections at an eighth
grade reading level. Other task elements account for most of the complexity of
literacy tasks on these studies. |
