Validation Of Readability For Chinese English Language Learners

Readability formula is internationally used to measure text difficulty. Usually, the widely used readability formulas only have two variables, word length/word frequency and the average sentence length. For example, Flesch Reading Ease, the most widely used readability formula was put forward by Flesh In 1948. According to this formula, the grade of a book is decided by the mean number of syllables and the mean number of word in the material. In this paper, Flesch Reading Ease formula is used as the tool of this research for its being built in the Microsoft Office Word to help users to measure the difficulty of the texts they deal with. However, the Chinese language has a different writing system from English, which characterizes the great difference of Chinese English learners. Therefore, I wonder if this readability formula is suitable for Chinese English learners and if it can be helpful for Chinese English teachers to make decisions on choosing proper reading materials for their students. I also want to know if there are some other factors working in the reading process of Chinese English learners. On the other hand, the input hypothesis suggested by Krashen shows that a language leaner learns most only when he understands language that contains structure that is'a little beyond'where he is now. At these points, this thesis aims at validating readability formula for Chinese English learners and providing instructions for L2 teachers to choose suitable reading materials.The thesis briefly introduces the main content and significance of the study. Then, systematically summarizes the significance of readability studies, and reviews the previous studies of readability at home and abroad as well as some well-known readability formulas. The research procedure and methodology are presented, which include selecting reading texts, measuring the readability of reading texts, conducting test to the subjects at different English proficiency level, collecting and analyzing test data, and asking some subjects to give the reason for their arrangement of passages based on their judgment of the difficulty of the passages in order to get more data for further research. The results show that the majority of the subjects claimed different order of the difficulty in reading comprehension of the six passages--A, B, C, D, E, and F in two groups (Type 1:passage A, B, and C, with different reading difficulty; Type 2:passage D, E, and F, with similar reading difficulty). Thus, it is suggested that readability is not the whole thing of reading comprehension. The thesis then investigates the characteristics of L2 reading and discusses influence factors in two dimensions:readability variables and other influences including social-cultural background, readers'motivation, text genre, the interaction between the reader and the writer, and grammar knowledge. Finally the thesis gives some suggestions which may be conducive to the teachers in helping students improve their reading comprehension.