The facilitative benefits of genre-specific reading have often been cited as a truism in the field of writing education. In line with this, writing center self-access libraries typically provide a selection of composition texts, including rhetorics (anthologies of model paragraphs and essays). Readability formulae (e.g., the Lexile Readability Formula) are often used to determine whether these texts will be a good fit for potential readers, and although the Lexile Formula reliably and validly assesses two features (i.e., semantic and syntactic), it does not consider other contributing features during the text selection process (e.g., rhetorical organization). To address this, this sequential, mixed-methods study explored the effects of rhetorical organization on undergraduate English language learners’ perceptions of difficulty when reading exemplars (i.e., essays) excerpted from rhetorics. The results indicated that rhetorical organization influences readability both as (a) a primary (i.e., an isolated feature) and (b) a conjoined feature (i.e., comprising two or more associated entities where the second impacts the first). The article also provides a suggestion for writing education professionals and the publishing industry: Readability formulae should be administered in a hybrid fashion, where additional features such as rhetorical organization are subjectively considered when assessing the difficulty of exemplars.

中文翻译：

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探索修辞组织如何促进论文的可读性

特定体裁阅读的便利性好处经常被认为是写作教育领域的一个不言而喻。与此一致，写作中心的自助图书馆通常会提供一系列作文，包括修辞学（范本和论文的选集）。可读性公式（例如，Lexile 可读性公式）通常用于确定这些文本是否适合潜在读者，尽管 Lexile 公式可靠且有效地评估了两个特征（即语义和句法），但它不考虑文本选择过程中的其他贡献特征（例如，修辞组织）。为了解决这个问题，这个顺序，混合方法研究探讨了修辞组织对本科英语学习者阅读修辞范例（即散文）时对困难的看法的影响。结果表明，修辞组织作为（a）主要（即，孤立的特征）和（b）联合特征（即，包括两个或多个相关实体，其中第二个影响第一个）影响可读性。这篇文章还为写作教育专业人士和出版业提供了一个建议：可读性公式应该以混合方式管理，其中在评估示例难度时主观考虑修辞组织等附加特征。结果表明，修辞组织作为（a）主要（即，孤立的特征）和（b）联合特征（即，包括两个或多个相关实体，其中第二个影响第一个）影响可读性。这篇文章还为写作教育专业人士和出版业提供了一个建议：可读性公式应该以混合方式管理，其中在评估示例难度时主观考虑修辞组织等附加特征。结果表明，修辞组织作为（a）主要（即，孤立的特征）和（b）联合特征（即，包括两个或多个相关实体，其中第二个影响第一个）影响可读性。这篇文章还为写作教育专业人士和出版业提供了一个建议：可读性公式应该以混合方式管理，其中在评估示例难度时主观考虑修辞组织等附加特征。