LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:5 May 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Copyright © 2012
M. S. Thirumalai
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The Readability of English Language Texts in the Primary Grades

Renu Gupta, Ph.D.

Abstract

When creating or selecting texts for instruction, textbook writers frequently rely on their judgment about the difficulty of a text. For a more objective measure of text difficulty, text analysis tools are available. This paper briefly describes one such tool, Coh-Metrix, which can identify linguistic and psycholinguistic features of texts. The text analysis tool was used to analyze the texts in four textbook series that are used in Classes 1-4. The results on four parameters are displayed, allowing a comparison between textbook series and across grades.

1. Introduction

Text readability measures have been around for decades (DuBay, 2004). One common measure is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, which is automatically provided in Microsoft Word under the Spelling and Grammar tool. Such measures provide a basic indication of the difficulty of a text for the target audience, whether it is students reading school textbooks or adults trying to understand official documents. However, they are not used as often as they should. Instead, writers prepare texts and documents, and leave it up to the reader to understand them. This can be seen in numerous official documents that are intended for the educated layperson, but leave the reader baffled because they consist of one-sentence paragraphs, heavy noun phrases (“the involvement of the people most affected by policy decisions is necessary…”), pseudo-cleft sentences (“What this means is that …”), etc. Gherman (2013), for instance, describes how Romanian farmers cannot understand government communications on European Union benefits and, hence, are unable to apply for benefits.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Renu Gupta, Ph.D.
renu@stanfordalumni.org
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