A Study On The Complexity Of Reading Texts In College English Textbooks

College English textbooks are an important tool for foreign language learning for university students.The textbook texts in them also have research value,and text complexity is an important indicator of language performance,reflecting the progress of language level and language development,acting not only on learners’ language output but also playing an important role in language input.It has been a key and difficult issue in the field of applied linguistics since the 20 th century.However,previous studies have focused only on the lexical or syntactic level,and there are relatively few comprehensive studies on text complexity.This study investigates the lexical,syntactic,and discourse complexity of 80 reading texts in the five textbooks of the New Comprehensive College English Course(Second Edition)based on Krashen’s input hypothesis theory.The study aims to answer the following questions:(1)What are the general characteristics of the complexity of the reading discourse in this series of college English textbooks?(2)How do lexical and syntactic complexity in textbook texts affect the complexity of reading discourse?To answer these questions,this study first used the Text A and Text B reading texts in the textbook as an abbreviated corpus,then entered them into the Coh-Metrix automatic analysis software to obtain the relevant data piece by piece,and then used the SPSS statistical analysis software to explore the text complexity of the textbook.Finally,based on the results of the statistical analysis,comments and suggestions are provided for textbook development and teacher instruction.By analyzing the data from the textbook text,this study concluded that.1.Most of the indicators did not differ significantly across the textbook series.There are almost no reasonable ladder-like differences in text complexity between textbook series.2.It is shows less positive significance with lexical complexity and syntactic complexity,and most of the indicators showed negative significance with each other.3.Since the current set of college English textbooks does not develop comprehensive and reasonable hierarchical differences in lexical,syntactic and discourse dimensions,it does not establish an appropriately difficult scaffolding for second language learners to acquire the target language.Teachers should introduce cultural background and expand their knowledge when teaching.This will help learners at all levels to better understand the content of the texts.Also,when selecting texts,textbook writers should follow Krashen’s input assumptions as closely as possible and categorize texts from simple to complex.This will better guide learners at all levels to learn college English.