Reading Skills in Business

• Author: B. Schmidt
• Pages: 633-635

Page 633

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...