Readability Assessment Tool for English Texts

EasyChair Preprint 6190

Abstract

This paper introduces and tests the reliability of a new computer application that facilitates the application of eight different extant readability formulas (i.e., statistically derived readability assessment models that are based on linguistic features and different readability criteria). The reliability is tested by comparing the readability criteria from two separate corpora (the Bormuth corpus and the Newsela corpus) with the formula scores derived from the application. The results show that the formula scores exhibit significant and high correlation to the difficulty of the texts, and that the application produces reliable output suitable for use in research and education.

Keyphrases: Readability formulas, readability assessment, text comprehension

@booklet{EasyChair:6190,
  author    = {Joon Suh Choi and Scott Crossley},
  title     = {Readability Assessment Tool for English Texts},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6190},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}