Sulla valutazione della comprensibilità dei testi scolastici
Aldo Borsese, Irene Parrachino
The readability of a text can be evaluate on the base of some characteristics, measurable through the words that make it. After a hint at the main legibility indexes developed both for the English and the Italian languages, the authors have proposed to consider the difference between «readability» and «understandability» of a school text. In order to achieve the comprehension of a content, it is first of all important that the teacher makes sure that the students have got the suitable cognitive requisites. Only at a later stage, according to the authors, it will be useful to get on to evaluating the written text, if and when it will be considered worthwhile to use it as a tool of didactic mediation. A text evaluation, though, should not be restricted to its readability; in order to be relevant, it should take into consideration also its understandability. For this reason, it has been proposed to evaluate the understandability of a text by examining some qualitative factors considered essential, using them as criteria and giving a numerical assessment to each one.
Keywords
Readability, Didactic communication, Text analysis, Understandability.