How to Split a Story Into Reading Units

A story of 1,500 words is too long for one lesson with most young learners, so you split it. The quick way is by pages: four pages today, four tomorrow. The better way follows the story. Research on story structure suggests that the shape of a story guides what people remember. Research on vocabulary suggests a limit on new words. This article shows how to find the cut points and how to check them, and ends with a worked example you can copy.

Where should you split a story?

Split a story at the points where the story itself pauses. There are three: the end of an episode, the moment the problem changes, and the moment just before a character decides something. Then check each part against two limits. Your class must be able to read it in the time you have. And it must not carry more new words than the class can handle. If a part fails either check, move the cut to the next pause.

In practice a graded story of 1,000 to 2,000 words often ends up as three or four units. That is a rule of thumb, not a research finding. The same steps work for a text from your own curriculum.

What story structure means, in plain words

Most simple stories are built the same way. First comes the setting: who, where and when. Then something happens that creates a problem. The main character reacts, sets a goal and makes an attempt. The attempt has an outcome. One round of problem, attempt and outcome is an episode. Most graded readers have several episodes.

Researchers call this kind of description a story grammar. Stein and Glenn (1979) described a story as a setting plus one or more episodes. In their scheme an episode includes an initiating event, the character's internal response, an attempt and a consequence. Mandler and Johnson (1977) described simple stories as a tree of basic units and the connections between them. They reported that the description worked for stories with one episode and for stories with several.

For a teacher, the structure gives three pauses to look for:

• The end of an episode. An attempt has had its outcome. The character has won, lost or learned something.
• A change of problem. The first problem is solved or replaced, and a new one begins.
• The moment before a decision. The character has a choice to make, and the reader does not yet know the answer.

What research on story structure and recall found

Mandler and Johnson (1977) argued that people use story structure as a schema, a mental outline that guides how a story is stored and recalled. They then compared how children and adults recalled stories. Both groups were sensitive to the structure, although the authors found some differences between them.

Stein and Glenn (1979) tested their scheme with 48 children in the first and fifth grades. Each child listened to stories and retold them, first after a short delay and again a week later. The amount recalled differed by age and by delay. But the kinds of information recalled stayed stable across stories, grades and delays. Recall did not simply favour the first and last things heard.

Neither study looked at foreign-language reading lessons, and neither tested where to cut a graded reader. Cutting at episode boundaries is an inference from this work. If recall follows the structure of a story, a unit that holds a whole episode gives pupils one complete thing to remember and retell.

How long does your class take to read a unit?

Reading time is the word count divided by the reading rate. The word count is easy. The hard part is choosing an honest rate.

Nation (2014) used 200 words per minute when he estimated how much reading learners need. He based that rate on university learners of English who had finished a speed-reading course and were reading easy texts. He also gave figures for a slower rate of 150 words per minute.

Many learners read more slowly. Beglar and Hunt (2014) reviewed studies of extensive reading and noted that most participants started below 100 words per minute. Their own Japanese university students started at about 97. Rates can rise. In Beglar, Hunt and Kite (2012), Japanese university students who read for pleasure for a year gained more in reading rate than an intensive reading group.

The studies in that review included secondary school pupils as well as university students. Starting rates ran from under 60 to over 200 words per minute. With a range that wide, do not borrow a rate. Measure your own class, and measure again each term.

1. Choose an easy passage at the level of the story, one the class has not read.
2. Ask pupils to read silently for exactly two minutes and to mark the last word they reach.
3. Count the words each pupil read and divide by two. That is the pupil's rate in words per minute.
4. Plan with the rate of your slower readers, not the class average, so that most pupils finish in time.

Then do the sum. A unit of 450 words at 100 words per minute takes 450 ÷ 100 = 4.5 minutes.

The rate of 60 is an example of a slow class. These are estimates of silent reading alone, so add time for audio, questions and talk. The same sum tells you how long a reading passage should be. With ten minutes of silent reading and a class rate of 60, a unit can hold about 600 words.

How many new words can one unit carry?

Hu and Nation (2000) tested 66 learners on a fiction text at four levels of known-word coverage: 80, 90, 95 and 100 per cent. They measured comprehension with a multiple-choice test and a written recall test. From the results, they estimated that learners need to know about 98 per cent of the words to read a story unassisted for pleasure.

Ninety-eight per cent means one unknown word in every 50. For a unit of 400 words, the sum is 400 × 0.02 = 8 unknown words.

Treat the figure as a guide. Kremmel, Indrarathne, Kormos and Suzuki (2023) repeated the study with 104 adult learners in Sri Lanka and could not fully replicate the original results. The figure also describes reading without help. A taught unit with audio, pictures and a teacher may carry a little more. That is a judgement, not a finding.

So count the new words in each unit. If one unit carries twice the load of its neighbours, move the cut or teach a few words before the reading. Then choose a small set of key words per unit to recycle in later lessons.

A worked example: one story cut into four units

Here is an invented A2 story of 1,600 words, 'The Broken Bridge'. The outline has eight events.

The cuts fall after events 2, 4 and 6, so each unit holds two events. The class in this example reads at 80 words per minute, measured as described above.

Each cut has a reason. Unit 1 ends when the problem is complete: the bridge is gone. Unit 2 is a whole episode, with a goal, an attempt and an outcome. Unit 3 stops just before Lina's decision. Unit 4 holds the decision, its outcome and the ending.

Both checks pass. The longest unit takes about five and a half minutes of silent reading. At one unknown word in 50, each unit can carry seven or eight new words.

End each unit on an open question

Each cut in the example leaves a question the class cannot yet answer. Write it on the board at the end of the session and open the next session with it.

• After unit 1: How can Lina get the bread to the market now?
• After unit 2: What else could she try?
• After unit 3: Should she give the boatman half of her bread? What would you do?

An open question has more than one reasonable answer, and the next unit settles it. A closed question such as 'What broke the bridge?' checks the reading but gives pupils no reason to come back. Both have a place, as the guide to reading comprehension question types explains.

This is classroom practice. None of the studies cited here tested unit endings. One practical point follows. The answer arrives at the start of the next session, so pupils who miss that session miss the pay-off. Decide how many sessions to run per unit with that in mind.

What goes wrong when you cut by page count

Cutting every four pages is quick, and it keeps units the same length on paper. It ignores everything else.

• Episodes are split. The attempt lands in one unit and its outcome in the next, so the first quiz can only ask about half an event.
• The decision is lost. If the cut falls just after a decision, the open question is gone.
• Word load is uneven. Pages are equal in length but not in load. One page may carry two new words and the next nine.

Page count still has a use. It is a fast first check on length before you count words. Once the units are set, place them in the term. The guide to planning a reading program across a school year shows how.

How iRead handles this

In iRead, a unit is a reading milestone inside a story, and each story belongs to a CEFR-levelled pack. Admins or teachers publish several sessions for the same unit, and each student joins the one they can attend. A quiz runs after every session, with questions generated from the story itself. Four word games are regenerated every 24 hours from the vocabulary of the story the class is reading.

Key takeaway

Find the story's pauses first. Then check each unit's reading time and new words, and move the cuts until every unit passes.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Mandler, J. M., & Johnson, N. S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology, 9(1), 111-151. doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(77)90006-8
2. Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In R. O. Freedle (Ed.), New Directions in Discourse Processing (Vol. 2, pp. 53-120). Ablex. The link is to the 1975 report version held by ERIC (ED121474). eric.ed.gov/?id=ED121474
3. Hu, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403-430. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66973
4. Kremmel, B., Indrarathne, B., Kormos, J., & Suzuki, S. (2023). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension: Replicating Hu and Nation (2000). Language Learning, 73(4), 1127-1163. doi.org/10.1111/lang.12622
5. Nation, I. S. P. (2014). How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9,000 words?. Reading in a Foreign Language, 26(2), 1-16. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66881
6. Beglar, D., Hunt, A., & Kite, Y. (2012). The effect of pleasure reading on Japanese university EFL learners' reading rates. Language Learning, 62(3), 665-703. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00651.x
7. Beglar, D., & Hunt, A. (2014). Pleasure reading and reading rate gains. Reading in a Foreign Language, 26(1), 29-48. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66684