Abstract
The study under consideration highlights the multidimensional comprehensive analysis of eight texts of diverse genre attribution applied in the international PIRLS testing during 2001-2011 (PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is conducted by International Association in assessment of academic achievements IEA. The national coordinator of the research implementation PIRLS in the Russian Federation is FIAQE «Federal Institute of assessment of quality education»). The objective of the study is to substantiate the hypothesis concerning similarities and differences in typological characteristics that aim at evaluating the complexity of popular science and literary texts. The cornerstone of the theory serves the assumption of the text complexity which involves quantitative (the word, sentence, text length) as well as qualitative (narrativity, syntactical simplicity, precision, referential cohesion, semantic cohesion) characteristics of the text [14]. The study determines that literary texts display a wider diversity of syntactical structures and a higher narrative degree than popular science texts under similar length and readability conditions. The precision indicators of popular science and literary texts are manifested in approximately the same range whereas referential and semantic cohesion represent a broad range of fluctuations in both cases.
Highlights
The complexity of the text as a scientific challenge is the study object of a number of disciplines such as Language Education, Psycholinguistics, applied Linguistics [1], which pursue their specific objectives as a part of research area
The linguistic approach to the complexity text issue determines the significance of those text characteristics which distinguish it as information-semantic entity [3, p.520; 4, p. 280], preserving communicatively notional sense
All the readability formulas are calculated depending on typological linguistic signs [8], since typological metrics used in readability formulas differ considerably in different languages
Summary
The complexity of the text as a scientific challenge is the study object of a number of disciplines such as Language Education, Psycholinguistics, applied Linguistics [1], which pursue their specific objectives as a part of research area. While investigating the issue the acknowledgement of three major group characteristics typical of all above-mentioned areas is mainstream: linguistic characteristics of the text, semantic (cognitive) complexity of the text and specific peculiarities of the reader [2]. It stands to reason that pragmatic goals can specify reduction or fragmentation of the communicatively notional sense of the text under study. 257] causing a change in a number of lexical and syntactical characteristics of the text [7]. This type of modeling focuses on the reduction of complexity of the authentic text and its ranging according to linguistic and cognitive abilities of the prospective reader
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