READING SKILLS IN BUSINESS

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 concluded 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 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.

see also Listening Skills in Business ; Speaking Skills in Business ; Writing Skills in Business

bibliography

Popham, E. L., Schrag, A. F., and Blockhus, W. (1975). A Teaching-Learning System for Business Education. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ross, N. (1977). An Analysis of the Nature and Difficulty of Reading Tasks Associated with Beginning Office Workers. Doctoral dissertation. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University.

Salzman, G. G. (1979). A descriptive study of the reading, writing, and mathematics tasks of beginning office workers. Doctoral dissertation. Columbus. OH: The Ohio State University.

Schmidt, B. J. (1982). "Job-related Reading Skills Developed by Business Students." The Journal of Vocational Education Research, 7(4), 29-38.

Schmidt, B. J. (1987). "Preparing Business Students to Read Office Documents." The Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, (29) 4, 111-124.

Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (1992). Learning A Living: A Blueprint for High Performance. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor.

Taylor, H. P., and Hancock, D. O. (1993, September). "Strategies That Reinforce Academics across the Business Curriculum." Delta Pi Epsilon Instructional Strategies, 9(4).

Taylor, W. L. (1953). "Cloze Procedures: A New Tool for Measuring Readability." Journalism Quarterly, 30, 415-433.

B. June Schmidt