Kazan scientists have developed a text readability index for schoolchildren

It depends on the length of words, sentences and lexical diversity

The problem of adapting textbook texts to the age and cognitive abilities of schoolchildren of different classes is being studied by employees of the Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication of the Kazan Federal University. They created a tool to determine the readability level of texts based on the length of words, sentences and other characteristics.

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According to many experts, most of the textbooks offered to schools by the Ministry of Education are overly complex and, accordingly, low readability index. As a result, the discrepancy between the complexity of textbooks and the level of perception of schoolchildren often leads to demotivation and simply reluctance to read books.

As reported by «MK» at the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, KFU specialists have created the “Rulingua” program, with which you can evaluate a particular text depending on its set of numerous parameters.

According to the project leader, Professor Marina Solnyshkina, the complexity of texts depends on cognitive and linguistic components. Moreover, the second, like the first, should correspond to the psychophysiological abilities of schoolchildren, but in practice we do not always see this.

In the program for assessing the readability index, the developers introduced such text parameters as sentence length, the number of nouns in the genitive case, future tense verbs, the ratio of verbs to nouns and lexical frequency.

— Two main parameters influencing the degree of readability, – this is the length of words and the length of sentences, – explains Marina Solnyshkina. – Let's say  In social studies textbooks, our program counted an average of 38 words per sentence. If there are still 4-5 complex words there, then children, even eighth- and ninth-graders, will find it difficult to retain the meaning of what they read in their working memory until the end of the sentence. 

Scientists are adding to the system, measuring not only the length of sentences with numbers , but also the ratio of verbs to nouns. If there is little action in the text, it is usually more difficult for the child to perceive. 

– The peculiarity of the perception of texts by children of different ages also depends on the degree of connectedness of sentences, – explains the professor. – It should be high enough so that the young reader does not lose the thread of the story. For example: “Vasya went to school. He likes the beautiful school.” Here we see a repetition of the same word “school”. It cannot be used too often, but using a large number of its replacements will also not be beneficial, otherwise the text will be very difficult to understand.  

– Using our methodology, as part of our work on the project, we were able to analyze all school textbooks for grades 1–8, with the exception of those created in accordance with the new Federal State Educational Standard, – says Solnyshkina. –  As a result, we came to the conclusion that the majority of texts have increased complexity. For example, the textbook “Informatics and ICT” for 1st grade it has a readability index of 2.98, that is, it can only be recommended to students of 3rd grade.

Experts hope that in the future their development will be useful in schools for conducting a linguistic examination of all educational literature before using it.