CZ Talk:Student Level

Ehrm, there's absolutely nothing here... Its freaking me out... What was the purpose of this exactly?? ...said Denis Cavanagh (talk) (Please sign your talk page posts by simply adding four tildes, ~~~~.)

I think Larry set it up as a holding page. A subtle hint to those with expertise or interest to start outlining the role these pages might play. Welcome in at the ground floor ;) Chris Day (talk) 08:48, 21 August 2007 (CDT)

Here is an example of one that is more fully developed. CZ:Related_Articles linked from CZ:Subpages Chris Day (talk) 08:50, 21 August 2007 (CDT)

Reading Level

I have no experience writing for kids but for adults with low literacy levels, which follows the very same principles of limiting vocabulary and so forth.

We need to answer a fundamental question: what reading level are these going to be written at? Whether one targets text for 6 to 10 year-olds or 10 to 14-year-olds makes a vast difference in not only text but style. "Student" implies a 10-14 age level while "Kids" should apply to 6-10, although another option is to try to target it to somewhere between "Student" and "Kid". Here is a sample, as such, re-written from Butler to give an idea:

A butler is a special kind of servant in a very large house. They are in charge of the house itself, plus its food, adult drinks, tables, and other servants. They also help their employers in many other ways. Butlers have done their job for hundreds and hundreds, even thousands of years. Long ago, people used to force butlers do their jobs, but today they are happy to do them and can be paid a lot of money.

The first people we know about who were sort of like butlers lived in Egypt almost 4,000 years ago. There, people made slaves take care of huge rooms full of wine kept in many large jugs. The slaves had to serve it to the house's family and all their many visitors, who were always coming and going. In those days, when a family had a lot of wine, it meant they were very rich and powerful. The Pharaohs in Egypt were the most rich and powerful of all, because they were the rulers over all of Egypt. They always had slaves who they put hard at work.

About 2,000 years ago, other slaves who were sort of like butlers lived in Greece and Rome. Life there was a lot like it was for slaves in Egypt, but no quite as bad.

The above is written at Flesch-Kincaid level 6.4 with reading ease at about 78.

So we need to make some decisions here.

 —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 14:31, 21 August 2007 (CDT)

How did you determine those levels; is there a web-interface that analyzes the text or did you score it from your experience? --Robert W King 14:40, 21 August 2007 (CDT)

I wrote it at that level from experience, then used tools to confirm it. Google Flesch-Kincaid and you'll find lots of info and tools. Some are better than others. MS Word has a function in it to determine it. :-)  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 19:00, 21 August 2007 (CDT)