Tackling Text Complexity

Text complexity is an issue that many students run into. Unfortunately increasing a student’s ability to read complex texts requires them to try to read material that is out of their comfort level. This concept is almost identical to Vygotsky’s scaffolding theory. His theory is that students need to gradually be pushed to the step that is just out of their reach, so that eventually they will be at that level. If a student keeps reading books that they feel comfortable with, they will most likely be very efficient at that level, but they don’t have the ability to improve in more complex texts. Chapter six of Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction puts it this way; “The notion that skills do not improve much once they become automatic is one reason teachers who use repeated reading of texts to build reading fluency do not involve students in reading the same passage a dozen times…students generally develop sufficient fluency with the passage, and further practice is mostly a waste of time….challenging tasks are required to improve skills (p. 111-112).” This isn’t going to be an easy or enjoyable process, because most people don’t enjoy trying to do difficult things that they are not good at.

In general, math isn’t something that is easy to read. Math textbooks have one purpose in mind and that is not to entertain the reader with clever literary tactics or suspenseful story plots. The goal is to portray the material in a clear and dry-cut manner. Therefore, I would say that mathematical texts do not generally become more complex in terms of text structure, but rather in relation to the more difficult topics with which they deal with. Math builds upon itself. To understand new concepts, you must have a comfortable understanding with prior knowledge. This also adds a certain complexity to math texts because often it is assumes that the reader knows how to apply what they know to the new processes.

Chapter six of Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction also discusses deliberate practice. According to the text, there are three main components that teachers need to take into consideration in order to effectively provide deliberate literacy-related practices for their students. These three points are “previously acquired abilities, steady progression of difficulty, and immediate, valid feedback (p. 108).” Teachers who develop good readers into even better readers are able to do this when they keep those three components of deliberate practice in mind.

Hinchman, K. A., & Sheridan-Thomas, H. K. (2008). Best practices in adolescent literacy instruction. New York: Guilford Press.