An Quantitative Analysis Of The Text Difficulty Of New Practical Chinese Reader Based On The New Curriculum

Textbook evaluation basically deals with to which extent textbooks correspond to curriculums,so as the evaluation of the difficulty level of the texts in language textbooks.An overview on the present studies of text difficulty of CSL textbooks shows that the chosen of predictable factors and standardized curriculums could sometimes be over subjective,thus couldn't meet the need for textbook compiling or revising.Based on the review of readability research and text difficulty studies of CSL textbooks,the author attempts to establish a fundamental research framework for text difficulty studies,which lay stress on predictable factors from various dimensions and layers,in according with CSL textbook compilation and evaluation theories,as well as referring to the findings in the field of reading psychology.The framework holds that the quantitative analysis of text difficulty is essentially an objective and systematic textbook evaluation activity,mainly dealing with the difficulty causes by the style of writing.The framework includes three process,that is,establish qualitive and quantitative criterion for the predictive factors,data statistics and preliminary analysis,comprehensive analysis and assessment.The predictive factors,which exist in the dimension of language and characteristic,lie in syntactical system,phonological system and so on,finally turn into measurable variables such as text length and sentence length.assessment process contains lateral and vertical assessment,internal and external assessment.Guiding by this framework,taking "International Curriculum for Chinese Language Education" as main criterion,the author measure the text difficulty of "New Practical Chinese Reader"(NPCR).The study shows that NPCR generally keeps reasonable text difficulty levels,which can be describe as beginner level-primary level-intermediate level.But problems are still unavoidable.Book one has a sharp change of difficulty level and book 4 contains too much high-level items.The quantity and occurrence of difficult items should be restrained or regulated to rebuild a reasonable material distribution system for NPCR.The study on NPCR also suggests that researchers should pay more attention to the relations between predictable factors and improve technical measures to consummate the framework.