The Effect of Altered Lexile Levels of Informational Text on Reading Comprehension

Abstract

We examined how using five different simplified texts on the same subject would affect reading comprehension. 335 students in grades four through eight read one of five texts retrieved from Newsela.com and then completed a comprehension test. Results from a 3-way ANOVA showed no significant interaction among grade, reading level and text condition. Pairwise comparisons showed that below-level readers’ scores improved only with extremely lower levels of text and on-level and above-level readers’ scores did not significantly change regardless of text level. Regression analysis showed no statistically significant contribution of text level to overall comprehension scores. The findings of this study have implications for choosing leveled texts for reading instruction.