The effectiveness of English Language Teaching (ELT) materials significantly influences the learning outcomes of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, positioning these resources as cardinal in the acquisition process. Despite this widely acknowledged significance, there remains a notable gap in research concerning the evaluation of key…

This study examined the relationship of linguistic complexity, captured using a set of lexical richness, syntactic complexity, and discoursal complexity indices, to second language (L2) learners' perception of text difficulty, captured using L2 raters' comparative judgment on text comprehensibility and reading speed. Testing materials were 180…

Textbooks are an important source of knowledge input on which the transmission of academic knowledge often relies, especially in the early stages of academic learning. Adopting a corpus-based approach, this study evaluates the text difficulty of science textbooks used in secondary English-medium instruction schools in Hong Kong, with a focus on…

Purpose: Complex features of science texts present idiosyncratic challenges for middle grade readers, especially in a post-Common Core educational world where students' learning is dependent on understanding informational text. The primary aim of this study was to explore how middle school readers process science texts and whether such…

This study aimed to investigate the readability of the fifth-, sixth, seventh and eighth-grade mathematics course books prepared in deference to the 2017 curriculum and distributed to schools by MEB. This study utilized the descriptive document analysis which is a qualitative research method. Readability of the mathematics course books were…

Science curriculum standards were mapped onto various texts (literacy readers, trade books, online articles). Statistical analyses highlighted the inconsistencies among readability formulae for Grades 2-6 levels of the standards. There was a lack of correlation among the readability measures, and also when comparing different text sources. Online…

This study of English as a second language (ESL) reading textbooks investigates cohesion in reading passages from 27 textbooks. The guiding research questions were whether and how cohesion differs across textbooks written for beginning, intermediate, and advanced second language readers. Using a computational tool called Coh-Metrix, textual…

This paper, deriving from a larger study, evaluates the readability of two Grade 4 natural sciences textbooks used by learners who speak English as an additional language in two South African schools. The study is set within the context of the reading-related transitional challenges faced by English second language learners when they move from the…

Given the deficiencies of readability formulae as reliable tools for measuring text readability in educational settings, this study aims to offer a new measure to improve the current methods of testing the readability levels of texts through the incorporation of the newly-developed concept of emotioncy. To this end, a group of 221 students were…

The widely adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) call for raising the level of text complexity in textbooks and reading materials used by students across all grade levels in the United States; the authors of the English Language Arts component of the CCSS build their case for higher complexity in part upon a research base they say shows a…

This paper reports activities (as part of a university course in language teacher education on teaching reading) in which primary school student teachers (all ESL in-service teacher trainees) explored their own skills of determining textbook readability using an online software tool and a cloze test completed by two hundred and seventy-eight Grade…

The learning difficulties described by students in statistics courses continue to engage researchers from several disciplines. One source of difficulty for graduate students in educational statistics courses is the reading difficulty of the textbook. Instructors making decisions about a textbook typically have little information about the reading…

Parts 1 and 2 (SE 524 424 and 527 089) described Flesch readability for determining a text's reading level and results of applying the test to astronomy/physics textbooks. This part presents results for a new sample of texts, including calculus-level texts. A comparison with high school physics texts is provided. (JM)

Provides step-by-step procedures for developing an index which uses the Gunning Fog technique to evaluate the level of reading difficulty of textbooks. Cites examples, illustrations, and several warnings in the discussion. (RT)