READING SKILLS

In the business world, workers use special skills to complete
their reading tasks. Traditionally, however, business
educators have relied on others to develop the job-related
reading skills of their students. In 1975, Sticht noted that
the overwhelming majority of time in schools is allocated
to teaching the reading and interpreting of novels, short
stories, dramas, and poetry as opposed to teaching technical
reading skills needed in the workplace. The SCANS
(Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills)
report released in 1991 included the reading of technical
material as a foundation skill needed by all workers.
Workplace reading includes the ability to understand and
interpret various documents including diagrams, directories,
correspondence, manuals, records, charts, graphs,
tables, and specifications.
In the 1970s, two researchers, Ross and Salzman,
studied the reading tasks of randomly selected office
workers in the Columbus, Ohio, area. Ross completed
one-hour observations of one hundred beginning office
workers, and Salzman collected 2,659 samples of reading,
writing, and mathematical activities from thirty-five
beginning and thirty-five experienced office workers.
Outcomes of these two studies identified three unique
reading skills office workers use: proofreading, verifying,
and comprehending detail.
Building on the research that Ross and Salzman completed,
Schmidt reported, in 1987, the reading levels of
office documents collected for the purpose of developing
reading materials aimed at building technical reading
skills. One hundred and twenty-one documents collected
from ten businesses were analyzed for reading level using
the FORCAST formula. The FORCAST formula developed
in 1975 by Caylor, Sticht, Fox, and Ford uses the
percentage of one-syllable words as the basis for determining
reading level, so it eliminates consideration of recurring
technical terms, which can artificially raise the
reading level of technical materials.
The average reading grade levels for the documents
ranged from 11.3 for those collected from a bank to 13.4
for those collected from a university continuing education
center office. Other businesses that provided documents
and their average reading grade levels included a space
industry manufacturer, 11.4; a town administration
office, 11.8; a hospital, 12; an insurance company, 12; a
chemical industry manufacturer, 12.1; a railroad, 12.8; a
country administration office, 13.1; and a school division
office, 13.1. Thus, the reading grade level of typical office
documents is considerably higher than general interest
reading materials. Further, most reading done by adults is
technical, job-related reading and not the type of reading
emphasized in schools.
Based on a study of two groups of high school students
in which one group was enrolled in courses required
to complete a business program and the other group
enrolled in selected elective business courses, Schmidt
reported in 1982 that the first group, composed of 279
students, performed better on a proofreading skills test
than the second group, comprising 1,058 students. However,
on tests measuring the skills of verifying and comprehending
detail, the first group did not score better than
the second group. The tests were constructed from actual
business documents. From this outcome, Schmidt coneobf_

634 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BUSINESS AND FINANCE, SECOND EDITION
Reading Skills in Business
cluded that reading exercises for developing the skills of
verifying and comprehending detail were needed.
The National Business Education Association published
the exercises that evolved from the studies. In the
introduction to the Office Reading Exercises, Schmidt
describes trial use of the exercises prior to their publication.
They were used with experimental and control
groups, each with more than 250 high school students.
After completing a pretest, the experimental group completed
the ten exercises, using 15 to 20 minutes to complete
one exercise per day. The students were simply given
the exercises and informed of expected outcomes. This
group not only scored significantly higher on a post-test
administered at the completion of the exercises, but also
on a post-test administered after a lapse of three to five
weeks. They also scored significantly higher on the posttest
than the control group. Thus a research base exists to
justify the use of the exercises.
The ten exercises were all developed from actual
office documents including a catalog page, a price list, an
insurance claim, an enrollment report, a budget allocation
form, a meal price schedule, a program confirmation, zoning
ordinance information, concentration banking information,
and an expense account. Schmidt provides two
approaches that can be used for teaching the exercises.
One is a holistic approach where the students are simply
given the exercises, one day at a time, and told the outcomes
desired. This was the approach used in the study
described above. They devise, along with their classmates,
their own methods for achieving the outcomes. The other
approach is instructor-directed and is called a “Guided
Approach.” It allows the instructor to emphasize the thirteen
component skills that are subsets of the two main
skills, verifying and comprehending detail.
Verifying requires comparing technical information
that has been transferred from one place to another to be
sure that it has been transferred accurately. Comprehending
detail is reading printed technical information, then
determining if statements about it are accurate. The component
skills or sub-skills emphasized in the Guided
Approach are:
• Following directions
• Perceiving document structure
• Perceiving relationships
• Identifying relevant information
• Locating facts or specifics
• Recognizing comparison/contrasting information
• Interpreting symbols, graphics, or acronyms
• Recognizing sequence of information
• Summarizing or making generalizations
• Selecting relevant information
• Recognizing main idea
• Reading with partner to detect errors
• Recognizing errors: transpositions, typographical
and mechanical, additions and omissions
Taylor and Hancock, in a 1993 publication titled
“Strategies That Reinforce Academics Across the Business
Curriculum,” discussed strategies to help introduce, reinforce,
and extend students’ comprehension, vocabulary,
and writing in three reading stages. An overview of the
three stages follows.
Pre-Reading Stage. Before students are assigned technical
reading, they need to engage in pre-reading strategies to
help them in understanding the material. The reading can
be broken into smaller segments with a variety of activities
that promote student involvement. These might include a
graphic organizer, an analogical study guide, or an anticipation/
reaction guide. This guide helps focus pre-reading
discussion and can also serve for post-reading review.
Reading Stage. At the reading stage, the students need to
focus on garnering major ideas as well as important details
from the material. A study guide or selective reading guide
can help the students achieve this objective. The study
guide used should, unlike the text-explicit questions generally
supplied by textbook authors, extend the students’
thinking beyond mere “parroting” of the text-explicit concepts.
Post-Reading Stage. Once the students have read the
material, they need to engage in post-reading activities to
assure long-term retention of what they have read. The
pre-reading strategies can again be used or students can
undertake other activities. These might include vocabulary
reinforcement activities, journal writing, or other
writing activities that allow the students to apply information
from what they have read.
Thus, the reading of technical materials requires the
development of unique skills that are not addressed by
most teachers. The Office Reading Exercises developed by
Schmidt and the strategies recommended by Taylor and
Hancock provide some approaches that can be used to
teach technical reading skills. However, before these
approaches are used, instructors should also be concerned
with the extent that their students’ reading abilities match
those required for technical materials. Two methods are
available for this purpose: (a) the Cloze procedure developed
by Taylor in 1953, which permits the instructor to
measure the compatibility of printed materials with the

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BUSINESS AND FINANCE, SECOND EDITION 635
Records Management
reading ability of students, and (b) a pretest developed
from technical terms the material contains.
For classroom use, the following adaptation of the
Cloze technique is recommended by Popham, Schrag, and
Blockhus.
1. Randomly select reading material in six to nine passages
and delete every fifth word in each passage.
Stop when 20 words have been deleted.
2. In place of each word deleted, substitute an underscore.
3. Have the material typed, and instruct students to
place in each blank a word that makes sense. No
guessing or time restrictions permitted.
4. Analyze the answers and give credit for each substitution
that approximates the original meaning.
Determine a raw score for each student and convert
that raw score to a percent by dividing the actual
number of correct answers by the possible number
of correct answers.
5. Determine the level at which the students comprehend
the material by using the following scale. A
score of 0 to 30 percent equals the “frustration”
reading level, a score of 3l to 49 percent equals the
“instructional” reading level, and a score of 50 to
100 percent equals the “independent” reading level.
Some technical materials do not lend themselves to
the use of the Cloze test. For these materials a pretest
based on technical terms from the material can be developed
to provide insight into the extent that students can
understand the material. If a student answers less than half
of the items on the test correctly, the instructor may
assume that the student will have difficulty reading the
material.
Students need technical reading skills for the business
world. Furthermore, all teachers are expected to reinforce
academic competencies in their instruction. The procedures
discussed here can help teachers meet the challenge
of teaching technical reading skills, those essential for reading in business