Suchergebnisse

Financial reports can be regarded as the primary means of communication between a company's management and its shareholders. The reports also address all other kinds of stakeholders like employees, suppliers, customers, competitors, governments, potential investors, bond holders and, in a broad sense, the entire society. Still, it is questionable whether managers really deliver true information in their reports. One possible way of obscuring corporate information when results are negative, or of being forthcoming in disclosing information when results are good, is to adjust the reports' readab

"Areas for further research" is an oft-neglected section in theses. This article presents the authors' opinions as to some needed areas of further research in readability, as mapped out during a University of Wisconsin Ph.D. project, which should interest journalism teachers and graduate students.

For almost a hundred years now, readability formulas have been used to measure how difficult it is to comprehend a given text. To date, four readability formulas have been developed for Afrikaans. Two such formulas were published by Van Rooyen (1986), one formula by McDermid Heyns (2007) and one formula by McKellar (2008). In our quantitative study the validity of these four formulas was tested. We selected 10 texts written in Afrikaans – five articles from a popular magazine and five documents used in government communications. All characteristics included in the four readability formulas were first measured for each text. We then developed five different cloze tests for each text to assess actual text comprehension. Thereafter, 149 Afrikaans-speaking participants with varying levels of education each completed a set of two of the resulting 50 cloze tests. On comparing the data on text characteristics to the cloze test scores from the participants, the accuracy of the predictions from the four existing formulas for Afrikaans could be determined. Both Van Rooyen formulas produced readability scores that were not significantly correlated with actual comprehension scores as measured with the cloze tests. For the McKellar formula, however, this correlation was significant and for the McDermid Heyns formula the correlation with the cloze test scores almost reached significance. From the outcomes of each of these last two formulas, about 40% of the variance in cloze scores could be predicted. Readability predictions based only on the average number of characters per word, however, performed considerably better: about 65% of the variance in the cloze scores could be predicted just from the average number of characters per word.Keywords: Afrikaans, cloze test, readability formula, text comprehension, text difficulty

The media is a potent means of information in every democratic dispensation since it controls the masses' perceptions on virtually all aspects of human life. Therefore, news items must be presented in simple to understand terms. In this paper, the readability of four Ghanaian newspapers (two states – owned, two private owned) were evaluated. Each of the two private-owned newspapers was affiliated to the two dominant political parties in Ghana (NPP, NDC). Non-proportionate stratified sampling was used to sample 215 newspaper articles (editorials) from these four newspapers. Fog readability index was used to calculate the readability of the selected articles, and frequencies and percentages of the readability scores were computed. Independent sample t- test was used to compare readability across the categories of newspapers. The results revealed that the four newspapers are difficult to read such that on the average, one must have attained at least a college degree in order to read (based on Fog's index) and understand. In addition, the private-owned newspapers (Daily Guide and Enquirer) were relatively easier to read than the public-owned ones albeit the difference is rather small. Finally, the perceived pro – NPP newspaper (Daily Guide) was relatively easier to read than the perceived pro – NDC newspaper (Enquirer). The findings suggest that these newspapers are not communicating effectively with the masses suggesting a need for further editing to achieve this aim.

For almost a hundred years now, readability formulas have been used to measure how difficult it is to comprehend a given text. To date, four readability formulas have been developed for Afrikaans. Two such formulas were published by Van Rooyen (1986), one formula by McDermid Heyns (2007) and one formula by McKellar (2008). In our quantitative study the validity of these four formulas was tested. We selected 10 texts written in Afrikaans – five articles from a popular magazine and five documents used in government communications. All characteristics included in the four readability formulas were first measured for each text. We then developed five different cloze tests for each text to assess actual text comprehension. Thereafter, 149 Afrikaans-speaking participants with varying levels of education each completed a set of two of the resulting 50 cloze tests. On comparing the data on text characteristics to the cloze test scores from the participants, the accuracy of the predictions from the four existing formulas for Afrikaans could be determined. Both Van Rooyen formulas produced readability scores that were not significantly correlated with actual comprehension scores as measured with the cloze tests. For the McKellar formula, however, this correlation was significant and for the McDermid Heyns formula the correlation with the cloze test scores almost reached significance. From the outcomes of each of these last two formulas, about 40% of the variance in cloze scores could be predicted. Readability predictions based only on the average number of characters per word, however, performed considerably better: about 65% of the variance in the cloze scores could be predicted just from the average number of characters per word.