The basic problem in cutting the level of difficulty is to main-
tain an interesting style while reducing vocabulary difficulty, sentence
length, and paragraph length. It is extremely difficult to cut read-
ability to the first grade level unless one is a very highly skilled
person. It is easier to cut to the second grade level and it is not
difficult at all to reduce most articles to a third or fourth grade
level of readability.

 After you have completed the first difficulty-cutting, apply a
readability formula to the results. Garrard Press publishes The Graded
Reading Difficulty Work Sheet which will prove of great value here for
it provides a list of easy words which might be substituted for harder
ones. It will also give an indication as to whether the sentence
length should be reduced and whether or not more variation of sentence
lengths should be attempted. It can be used to check the balance
between sentence length and vocabulary difficulty.

 The annotated bibliography in Chapter XI gives a list of materi-
als acceptable to adult students. At the time this book went to press,
many companies whose addresses are given in Appendix A were preparing
new materials for adults at the introductory stage. Contact the local
representative of these companies and ask him to inform you of pertinent
publications. You will also want to stay alert for U. S. Government
Publications. The Office of.Education is preparing new materials for
adult basic education programs and for teaching immigrants who are work-
ing toward gaining citizenship. The government can be a fine source of
inexpensive materials for supplementary work, but often the quality is
below that of commercial publishers. It also does not offer the
services that commercial publishers do for many of them will provide con-
sultation and demonstration services at no fee.


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