Comparison of the readabilities of science and social studies textbooks

Abstract

In this study, the readabilities of 6th-grade science and social studies textbooks are compared in terms of words, sentences, and paragraphs. In the word analyses, criterion suggested by Kim (2003) in which about 238,000 words were classified into 7 categories according to their educational importances was adopted. In this study, the words from science and social studies textbooks were classified into four categories, and then the kinds and frequencies of words included in each category were investigated. In the sentence analyses, sentences were classified either a simple, a compound or a complex sentence, and the ratios of each type were calculated. The ratios of conjunctions and demonstratives were examined in the paragraph analyses. The results indicated that both the kinds and frequency of words in science textbook were smaller than those of social science textbook. However, the distributions of words across the four categories were similar regardless of science or social science textbooks. The ratio of simple sentences in science textbook was higher than that of social science textbook, though the ratios of both textbooks were much lower compared to the ratio of language textbook. The ratio of conjunctions in science textbook was lower than that of social science textbook. However, there were no differences between the ratios of demonstratives in both textbooks.