Authors:
Pappert, Sandra, pappert@idf.uni-heidelberg.de, Heidelberg University
Olszycka, Carolina, olszycka@idf.uni-heidelberg.de, Heidelberg University
Keywords: low literacy, vocational training, linguistic complexity, self-paced reading
Abstract:
Teachers at German vocational schools complain that texts in schoolbooks are too demanding for low literate readers (Niederhaus, 2013; Ghobeyshi et al., 2024). Corpus studies and reading aloud protocols helped us to identify potentially difficult structures. In a series of self-paced reading experiments, we manipulated the linguistic complexity of words, sentences, and texts. Heterogenous groups of vocational students participated in the experiments. They absolved either a prevocational training year in health and care that addressed students with no or low school-leaving qualification or they were in their first or second year of a vocational training in bakery or sales of bakery products. They spoke German as first language, early second language, or late second language/foreign language. Language proficiency was assessed by the German version of LexTALE (Lemhöfer & Broersma, 2012). In our contribution, we will focus on a subset of experimental manipulations in sentences (hyphenation at line breaks: none/at constituent boundaries/at syllable boundaries, cf. Geilfuß-Wolfgang, 2007; genitive/von-attributes; particle verbs in sentence-final/distance position; sentences with repeated noun phrases/subject ellipses/pronouns, cf. Gordon, Grosz, & Gilliom, 1993; zu-infinitives with un/ambiguous objects). Results fall into at least three patterns: structures were easy for all, difficult for all, or difficult for low proficient students. We will discuss the diagnostic potential of our measures as well as the pitfalls of running reading experiments with (young) low literate readers.