Text Difficulty Research Articles

통역 교육에서의 원문 텍스트 난이도 평가 자동화 : 코메트릭스(Coh-Metrix)를 이용한 다차원적 텍스트 난이도 평가를 중심으로

While text difficulty is one of the critical considerations in developing and selecting materials for interpreter training, its assessment is a challenging task due to the complexities involved in analyzing a large number of text characteristics. The recent developments in automated text analysis methods and tools are expected to alleviate the burden of individual teachers and students assessing source text difficulty by aiding their decision making process with the immediate provision of data on the objective and quantifiable text dimensions. This study presents three cases of applying automated assessment of source text difficulty based on the five Text Easability Principal Component Scores provided by Coh-Metrix, a widely-used automated tool for multilevel analyses of text characteristics. For the purpose of the study, source texts used for interpreter training in Korea and China were sampled to conduct text difficulty assessment with Coh-Metrix measures and its visualization tool. The study discusses the potential benefits of automated analysis of multidimensional text difficulty for selecting the appropriate materials for effective interpreter training.

Identifying Factors Contributing to Students’ Obstacles in Comprehending Recount Text

This research was conducted to find out the difficulties faced by students in understanding recount text, and the factors that cause these difficulties. To obtain data in this study, the researcher used two data collection techniques, namely observation and interview. Observation is used to collect data in class during the teaching learning process. Interview is intended to identify the causes of the students’ obstacles in understanding recount text. There were 6 students at eleventh grade of SMAN 1 Nisam who were used as subjects in this research. 2 students who have high academic achievement, 2 medium and 2 low. The result showed that they had many difficulties in understanding recount text, both internal and external factors. The internal factor is the lack of motivation. Besides, they also have difficulties in understanding the sentence structure in recount text. In addition, they also lack of vocabulary mastery, it makes them difficult and take a long time to understand a text in English. The external factors that cause their difficulties in understanding English texts are the lack of attention from their parents towards their achievement, especially towards English achievement. They also only have a little time to learn and practice English at their home because they are busy with other activities. The lack of supporting facilities such as English reading materials and dictionaries, it is also one of the factors causing students’ difficulties in understanding recount text.

Analysing the Readability Level of the Short Stories Used in the IEEL Course

The short story as a literary work has been ubiquitously used to teach language and literature. However, not all short stories are appropriate and suitable to be used in the language-learning classroom. One of the aspects that should be considered in choosing short stories to teach language and literature is the readability level. The matching of appropriate text difficulty level to the readers’ reading ability is crucial to inculcate an interest in reading and elicit comprehension. Derived from this rationale, this study aimed to investigate the readability level of short stories used in the Introduction to Educational English Literature Course (IEEL). Moreover, this study also attempted to analyse the students’ perceptions of the short stories assigned to them to read in the IEEL course. In measuring the readability level, document analysis utilizing the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula was employed. To strengthen the data and ensure triangulation, 5 participants were purposely selected to be interviewed to explore their perspectives after reading those short stories. The results showed that 3 short stories namely The Birthday Party, The Dead Men’s Path, and Turning Thirty were categorized as standard (63.1), fairly easy (74.4), and easy level (83.7) respectively. Lastly, further inquiries through semi-structured interviews found that the 5 participants were reported to have positive viewpoints after reading those short stories.

CEFR 기반 2015 개정 교육과정, 교과서, 수능의 일관성: 영어 읽기를 중심으로

This research investigated consistency of achievement levels stated in the 2015 revised national curriculum of English, high school English textbooks, and the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) according to CEFR Levels. Based on CEFR levels, this study compared levels of targeted achievement standards in the national curriculum, focusing on reading passages in High School EnglishⅡ and CSAT implemented for three consecutive years (2021-2023). Results indicated that the reading section of textbooks and CSAT included a considerable portion of passages whose text difficulty levels were higher than CEFR B2, exceeding the achievement standards required for high school graduates. These results suggest that difficulty levels in the national curriculum, textbooks, and CSAT should be adjusted according to target levels of language proficiency based on CEFR levels so that learning burden of students can be lessened and competency-based English teaching and learning finally can be performed.

Read and Imagine: Visual Imagery Experience Evoked by First versus Second Language.

This research examined visual imagery evoked during reading in relation to language. Following the previous reports that bilinguals experience less vivid imagery in their second language (L2) than first language (L1), we studied how visual imagery is affected by the language in use, characteristics of text, and readers' individual differences. In L1 and L2, 382 bilinguals read object texts describing pictorial properties of objects such as color and shape, spatial texts describing spatial properties such as spatial relations and locations, and excerpts from novels. They rated imagery vividness after each segment and the whole text, and rated the specific imagery characteristics (e.g., color, spatial relations). Regardless of the types of text or the timing of rating, the vividness of imagery was higher in L1 than in L2. However, English proficiency also predicted vividness in L2. Further, vividness in the object and spatial trials were predicted by the individual's object and spatial imagery skills. The effect of language on imagery depends on the text nature and difficulty, when and how vividness is measured, and individual differences.

An Analysis of Students’ Difficulties on Reading Text in Finding Main Idea at the Tenth Graders of SMK Darul A’mal Metro

Reading is about looking through the text for details. The context of this research is explained about the students’ difficulties on reading text in finding main idea. The objective of this research is to know the difficulties that faced by the students in reading text, the factors of the students’ difficulties in finding the main idea in text, the students overcome the difficulties in finding main idea in the text at the tenth graders of SMK Darul A’mal Metro. The research design of this research was qualitative research. The data collecting technique of this research was documentation, observation, and interview. The sample of this research was ten students of Computer and Network Engineering in e class at SMK Darul A’mal Metro. The result of this research shows that the students’ difficulties in reading text at the tenth graders of SMK Darul A’mal Metro is the students still difficult to find the main idea in English text. The factors that caused the students difficult to find the main idea in text are students need a long time in answering question of main idea question, students do not focus while answering question, and students also do not know the meaning of the sentence. Also most of students at the tenth graders of SMK Darul A’mal Metro are do not know what is main idea, and the students do not know how to find the main idea in the text. Another reason of the factor that make the students difficult to find the main idea in English text because of the long sentence, limit vocabulary of students, and the students’ lack of reading strategy. The students’ solving of the difficulties in finding main idea in the text are read again the text, ask the teacher, and ask friends for a help.
 Keywords: Students’ Difficulties Reading, Finding Main Idea, Reading Text

Dictating translations with automatic speech recognition: Effects on translators' performance.

Technologies can greatly improve translators' productivity and reduce their workload. Previous research has found that the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) tools for dictating translations can increase productivity. However, these studies often had small sample sizes and did not consider other important aspects of translators' performance, such as translation quality and cognitive effort. This study aims to investigate the impact of text input method on translators' performance in terms of task duration, time allocation, editing operations, cognitive effort, and translation quality, as well as whether text difficulty affects these factors. To do this, 60 Chinese translation trainees were randomly assigned to either a dictation group or a typing group, and completed two English-Chinese translations of varying levels of source-text difficulty. Data were collected using keylogging, subjective ratings, screen recording, and a questionnaire. The results showed that using ASR reduced the typing effort of participants without negatively affecting translation quality, but did not save time or reduce cognitive effort. No effect of text difficulty was observed. Analysis of the revisions made by the dictation group and the results of the post-test questionnaire provide insights into how ASR systems can be optimized for translation purposes.

Mind wandering during hypertext reading: The impact of hyperlink structure on reading comprehension and attention

Online reading is becoming more and more popular in learning and teaching environments. However, little is known about characteristics of hypertexts that influence on reading comprehension and attention. Some previous studies have suggested that attention failures also referred to as mind wandering (MW) occur whenever the available resources of the reader (e.g., working memory capacity; WMC) do not match the task demands (e.g., text difficulty). This study aims to investigate the effect of restructuring a linear text into different hypertext types by means of hyperlinks on MW in a cognitively demanding task like reading. We hypothesized that participants exposed to a difficult to read hypertext with networked structure engage more in task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) compared to participants asked to read a difficult but hierarchically organized hypertext. 90 participants read either an easy or difficult version of the same unfamiliar hypertext with either a hierarchical or networked structure and with embedded thought probes. Reading comprehension and WMC measures followed. As expected, participants reading the difficult (to read) hypertext with networked link structure showed significantly more TUTs than participants reading the hierarchical link structure hypertext. In addition, readers with a low-WMC showed significantly more TUTs while reading a demanding hypertext regardless of its structure. These findings are in line with the view that mind wandering occurs if available resources do not match with task demands, and thus deepen assumptions about hyperlinks as new cohesive devices.

Comprehensive Readability Assessment of Scientific Learning Resources

Readability is the measure of how easier a piece of text is. Readability assessment plays a crucial role in facilitating content writers and proofreaders to receive guidance about how easy or difficult a piece of text is. In literature, classical readability, lexical measures, and deep learning based model have been proposed to assess the text readability. However, readability assessment using machine and deep learning is a data-intensive task, which requires a reasonable-sized dataset for accurate assessment. While several datasets, readability indices (RI) and assessment models have been proposed for military agencies manuals, health documents, and early educational materials, studies related to the readability assessment of computer science literature are limited. To address this gap, we have contributed Computer science (CS) literature dataset <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">AGREE</b> , comprising 42,850 learning resources(LR). We assessed the readability of learning objects(LOs) pertaining to domains of Computer Science (CS), machine learning (ML), software engineering (SE), and natural language processing (NLP). LOs consists of research papers, lecture notes and Wikipedia content of topics list of learning repositories for CS, NLP, SE and ML in English Language. From the statistically significant sample of LOs two annotators manually annotated LO’s text difficulty and established gold standard. Text readability was computed using 14 readability Indices (RI) and 12 lexical measures (LM). RI were ensembled, and readability measures were used to train the model for readability assessment. The results indicate that the extra tree classifier performs well on the AGREE dataset, exhibiting high accuracy, F1 score, and efficiency. We observed that there is no consensus among readability measures for shorter texts, but as the length of the text increases, the accuracy improves. The AGREE and SELRD datasets, along with the associated readability measures, provide a novel contribution to the field. They can be used to train deep learning models for readability assessment, develop recommender systems, and assist in curriculum planning within the domain of Computer Science. In the future, we plan to scale AGREE by adding more LOs and adding multimedia LOs. In addition, we would explore the use of deep learning methods for improved readability assessment.

Quantitative Research on Readability Formula of Texts for Chinese Heritage Language

The compilation of Chinese heritage textbooks has always adopted the standards of teaching Chinese as mother language or as second language. The difficulty level of the texts is mostly measured separately from the aspects of Chinese characters, vocabulary, and grammar. There is no comprehensive quantitative evaluation standard. Readability formula is one of the methods to comprehensively measure the difficulty of text. The present study made use of Chinese heritage textbooks as the source of data and constructed readability formula by the method of multiple regression analysis. The formula includes four language features, i.e., proportion of difficult words, number of different characters, average sentence length, and proportion of function words, which could explain 72.9% of the variation of text difficulty level. Limitations and future works of the formula are discussed.

A Comparison of Linguistic Aspects in 2015-2019 NAEA English Listening Texts Between School Levels and Between Language Forms

The current study aims to investigate English listening texts of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA) at word, sentence, and text levels. It classifies NAEA listening texts into two school levels (middle school and high school) and two forms of spoken language (dialogues and monologues). It is necessary to examine changes of linguistic aspects in the NAEA for both middle and high school students to figure out whether text difficulty systematically rises as school level increases. The corpus for this study includes 169 listening texts from five academic years from 2015 to 2019. In this period, tests were implemented as paper-based tests. Two research questions are about linguistic differences of NAEA listening texts between middle school and high school and between dialogues and monologues at word, sentence and text levels. Coh-Metrix analyzed descriptive measures related to words, lexical diversity, and word information for word-level analysis, descriptive measures related to sentences and syntactic complexity for sentence-level analysis, and readability and referential cohesion for text-level analysis. Results and educational implications could increase the quality of NAEA listening texts.

Evaluation of summary of product characteristics and patient information leaflet of the best-selling drugs in Turkey in terms of readability

Background and Aims: Readability can be defined as the easiness or difficulty of texts to be understood by readers. In our study, it was aimed to evaluate the patient information leaflet and the summary of product characteristics in terms of readability in Turkish. Methods: Our study is a cross-sectional study. For our study, the best-selling drugs included in the "Turkish Pharmaceutical Market Monitoring Report-8, 2020 Market Status in Terms of Sales Volume and Value" prepared by the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency in 2021, were evaluated by using Turkish readability formulas (Ateşman and Bezirci-Yılmaz). Results: 138 patient information leaflet and summary of product characteristics of a total of 69 products were evaluated. It has been determined that an average of at least undergraduate education is required for the readability of the texts. The patient information leaflets are significantly shorter than the summary of product characteristics (p=0.000). However, in terms of readability, it was easier in Ateşman calculation and more difficult in Bezirci-Yılmaz calculation (p=0.007 and p=0.000, respectively). Conclusion: It has been seen that patient information leaflets are not easy to read texts prepared for patients. While preparing the texts to be read by the patients, the texts should be easily understandable and should be read and understood by people of all education levels.

“Batting” around Ideas: A Design/Development Study of Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Text Difficulty and Text Complexity

This study reports the knowledge of text complexity held by preservice teachers prior to coursework. The goal of this research is to determine what strengths and what learning needs preservice teachers have related to text selection with the intention of informing programmatic redesign. In this preliminary component of a design-development study, we report findings from the Text Complexity Task, a verbal protocol task administered to 31 preservice teachers. Findings show that when evaluating text complexity, preservice teachers noted word and text-level features, but attended less to phonemic patterns, multisyllable words, and sentence-level features. Additionally, participants differed in their arguments about how some text features (e.g., unknown vocabulary, rhyming patterns) influence text difficulty. Preservice teachers also differed in their views of how a reader’s prior knowledge influences text difficulty, vocabulary knowledge, and word solving. The article concludes with recommendations for teacher educators interested in improving preservice teachers’ text selection for reading instruction.

THE ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN READING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT THE EIGHTH GRADERS OF SMP MUHAMMADIYAH PAGARALAM

ABSTRCT This study aims to analyze the difficulties of students in reading descriptive texts in class VIII SMP Muhammadiyah Pagaralam. This study used a qualitative descriptive method to analyze the data. The population of this study were students of class VIII SMP Muhammadiyah Pagaralam, and the sample was taken by purposive sampling technique. The data of this research is the students’ difficulties in reading descriptive text. Data were collected using interviews and questionnaires. To find out the results of the data that has been given to students , the author uses the percentage formula. The results showed that the difficulties in reading descriptive text was low. It can be seen from the data, they still have difficulties in reading descriptive texts. Regarding the results, the writer suggests that students practice their reading skills specifically in descriptive texts. If they practice more, they will have good reading skills. To the English teacher, the writer suggests giving more explanations and exercises for students related to descriptive texts. Then for other researchers, the writer suggests studying students’ difficulties in reading descriptive texts.

학문 목적 한국어 듣기 교재의 텍스트 분석

The purpose of this study is to analyze Korean listening texts for academic purposes and to analyze listening texts based on authenticity of the material and intertextuality. In this study, 4 types of Korean listening textbooks developed for academic purpose learners were selected and the listening texts for each unit were analyzed. In the authenticity of the material area, whether real materials is used and the genre for academic purposes are set, and in the intertextuality area, the number and difficulty of texts, and the relationship and arrangement between texts are set. As a result of the analysis, the materials used in each textbook generally used a unified format, and there were no textbooks using three types of materials at the same time. Also, as a result of examining the discourse genre, three textbooks were all focused on the lecture listening type, and the remaining one presented various genres. On the other hand, as a result of analyzing the intertextuality between texts, the two textbooks used multiple texts. In relation between texts, one long lecture discourse was presented by dividing it into two listening texts and the contents of the two texts were sequentially connected. First, the ratio of actual material use should be different according to the proficiency of learners for academic purposes, and texts should be provided that appropriately mix the three types of materials. In addition, it is necessary to provide various one-way and two-way listening texts by reflecting an appropriate ratio for each type, focusing on the listening genre that learners directly experience in the academic context. Finally, based on an understanding of intertextuality, it is necessary to try to construct a listening texts.

Constructivism‐based drama activities in EFL reading classes

Lack of interest in classroom activities, difficulty in understanding reading texts, and unfamiliarity with using reading strategies are the three major problems that negatively impact students' achievements in English as a foreign language (EFL) reading classes. This article considers integration of drama activities into EFL reading classes, looking particularly at the constructivist foundations of this approach to (1) motivate students to read and participate in class, (2) facilitate understanding and meaning construction, and (3) develop students' reading strategies and skills. Incorporation of drama activities grounded in cognitive and social constructivist learning theory is especially effective as these theories accentuate prior knowledge, student‐centered learning, social interactions, cooperative learning, and engaging and stimulating classroom activities as well as teachers' scaffolding. Two sample activities are presented to illustrate the practical implementation of such drama activities in EFL reading classes. Drama activities based on constructivism are recommended as an effective approach to encourage students to learn, increase understanding, and sharpen reading strategies in EFL reading classes.

Junior High School Students’ Difficulties in Reading English Texts

In learning English, students are directed to have skills in reading English texts because students can understand the information through reading. This study investigates the students’ perception of the factors causing the students to have difficulties in reading English texts and the strategies the students use to overcome the difficulties in reading English texts. This research belongs to descriptive qualitative research, and the research data sources are interviews and questionnaires. The data were taken from the student in 8th grade of SMP Negeri 1 Bungku. There were 15 students answered the questionnaire, but only 13 joined the interview. The data were analyzed by reducing data, displaying data, and drawing conclusions. The results of this study indicate that the students' perception of the students’ difficulties in reading English text includes the lack of motivation from the teacher to improve the students’ reading skills and the lack of the students' vocabulary and pronunciation. Moreover, the strategies the students used to overcome their difficulties were taking notes of some important points in the text and the newly acquired vocabulary, translating them using google translate, and practicing them with friends.

Gender differences in reading: Examining text-based interest in relation to text characteristics and reading comprehension

Reading is a key competence for knowledge acquisition and learning processes. One important source of reading motivation is interest. Even though students' text-based interest often differs by gender, it remains unclear which text factors underlie these differences and whether text-based interest relates to reading comprehension among boys and girls. In a sample of 514 elementary students (47.2% girls), this study examined whether text topic, protagonists' gender, and text difficulty affect boys' and girls' text-based interest and whether interest and reading comprehension are intertwined. Based on a repeated within-subject design using fourteen narrative texts, the results indicated that boys' interest was higher in texts with male-attributed topics, male protagonists, and in more difficult texts. In contrast, girls’ interest was only affected by text difficulty. Text-based interest and reading comprehension were significantly related, albeit stronger for boys than for girls. The findings are discussed regarding future implications for research and educational practice.

Design and Implementation of an Interactive English Translation System Based on the Information-Assisted Processing Function of the Internet of Things

As a new type of language expression, interactive translation is widely used in English, and based on the Internet of Things technology, text harmony and glyphs are combined for information exchange. This design adopts B/S mode to realize the relational query of document content. This paper adopts the B/S architecture mode to design, implement, and test its functional modules and related data analysis to provide a friendly interactive English translation system service to the user group. In this paper, the development of the Internet of Things information-assisted translation system mainly focuses on the semantic embedding and correlation analysis based on the Internet of Things as well as the realization of interactive functions. On this basis, an interactive English translation process based on corpus and text data sets is designed and completed. This method can not only effectively solve the problems of large amount of text and high difficulty of expression but also can make the translation more concise and clear to achieve the required expression effect of the original text. At the same time, the system can automatically perform statistical analysis on the translation results to verify the accuracy and completeness of the translation results, providing reference value for subsequent function implementation. In this paper, we mainly study the realization of interactive functions and propose solutions to its existing problems and deficiencies. The experimental results show that the average BLEU of the system in this paper is 0.985, which indicates that the translation quality of the system is good and the interaction with users is improved.

Latin Vocabulary Knowledge and the Readability of Latin Texts: A Preliminary Study

Studies have found a strong correlation between vocabulary knowledge and L2 reading comprehension. This preliminary study of the readability of Latin texts considers how common measures of lexical complexity (word length, word frequency, lexical sophistication, lexical density, and lexical variation) can inform instructors about what texts have the least (and most) lexical complexity. By defining several key measurements of Latin lexical complexity, we establish a provisional account of the lexical difficulty of some familiar Latin texts that are frequently taught in elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels, and propose LexR, a single, informative, integrated score that provides a sense of the comparative lexical complexity of Latin texts.