Activity 3-2:
Analyzing Writing

Purpose: Participants will review the factors that can make a piece of writing difficult to read or, conversely, easy to read.

Materials
Handout 10, Handout 11, chart paper

Process
Distribute Handout 10, Plain Language Writing. Discuss each item briefly and answer any questions as to meaning.
Trainer Preparation Notes:

Be prepared with examples from actual materials used in your Head Start program to support each point on the handout.

Ask for a volunteer to reread aloud Passage #1. Using Handout 10 as a guide, have participants suggest some of the factors that give this passage a low reading level. The answers may include:

Ask for a new volunteer to read aloud Passage #4.

Note that according to one readability formula (the FOG index), Passage #1 is at a 3rd grade reading level and passage #4 is at a 22nd grade reading level.

Tell participants that since many, if not most, Head Start parents do not have post-graduate degrees their goal for this activity will be to revise Passage #4 into plain language.

Instruct participants to analyze this passage, sentence by sentence. Do this by having a volunteer read aloud the first sentence. Then ask for comments on what makes that sentence relatively hard to understand and how that sentence could be restated more clearly. Write suggestions on chart paper. Repeat this process for the other three sentences.

Trainer Preparation Notes:
Participants will make a variety of suggestions, some modifying other suggestions. Write all of the suggestions on the chart paper. This shows that making meaning clear can take a lot of drafting and rewriting. It also demonstrates that there is no "one way" to say something.

To help facilitate this exercise, the four sentences from Passage #4 are analyzed, with some suggested rewording, below.

Sentence 1
The overall goal of the Head Start program is to bring about a greater degree of social competence in children.

What makes the sentence hard for a reader to understand:

How the sentence could be restated more clearly:

The main goal of Head Start is to help children learn and grow through their experiences with other people - with family members, friends, schoolmates, teachers, and everyone else in their lives. This ability to have successful relationships with other people is called "social competence."

This suggested rewording shows that sometimes the use of more words can make things clear, by defining terms that may be unfamiliar.

Sentence 2
Social competence takes into account the inter-relatedness of cognitive and intellectual development, physical and mental health, nutritional needs, and other factors that enable a developmental approach to helping children achieve social competence.

What makes the sentence hard for a reader to understand:

How the sentence could be restated more clearly:

For children to develop social competence, they must have learning opportunities, healthy bodies and minds, and good nutrition.

Note that it is difficult to reword the last part of the sentence ("factors that enable a developmental approach....") without knowing more about what the writer was attempting to say. This is important. When material is written at a very high level, it can hide the fact that the meaning is actually unclear.

Sentence 3
To the accomplishment of this goal, Head Start objectives and performance standards provide for the improvement of the child's health and physical abilities, including appropriate steps to correct present physical and mental problems and to enhance every child's access to an adequate diet.

What makes the sentence hard for a reader to understand:

How the sentence could be restated more clearly:

Therefore, Head Start is committed to:

Note that by rewording the sentence, it becomes apparent that the writer has left out the fact, inferred by the previous sentence's definition of social competence, that Head Start is also committed to "helping children learn."

Also note that in the suggested rewrite, we have left out reference to "objectives and performance standards." Some participants may feel those particulars are too important to compress into "Head Start is committed to." That's a valid opinion - have them suggest their own restatement.

Sentence 4
The performance standards also provide for the improvement of the family's attitude toward future health care and physical abilities.

What makes the sentence hard for a reader to understand:

How the sentence could be restated more clearly:

Head Start is also committed to helping parents build on the skills and knowledge they can use to ensure the healthy development of their children.

Debriefing
Distribute Handout 11, A Rewrite of Passage #4. Have a volunteer read it aloud. Ask for comments on the two versions of Passage #4.

Trainer Preparation Notes:
This may be a good opportunity to discuss the concern that making things "too easy" to read will offend fluent readers. How do the participants respond to the two versions? Do they find either one condescending, unfriendly, too complex, or overly simplistic? Chances are that the more difficult passage is more off-putting to people than the easy-to-read passage. Good readers may enjoy the complex and literary language of scholarly works and fiction. But when it comes to need-to-know information, good readers are like everyone else: they want it straight and simple.


Module 3 | Activity 3-1 | Activity 3-3

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