scholarly journals Automated Complexity Assessment of English Informational Texts for EFL Pre-service Teachers and Translators

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentyna Parashchuk ◽  
Laryssa Yarova ◽  
Stepan Parashchuk
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Informational Texts ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Text Complexity ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Vocabulary Word ◽  
Analysis System ◽  
Complexity Assessment ◽  
Insight Into

Automated text complexity assessment tools are of enormous practical value in solving the time-consuming task of analyzing English informational texts for their complexity at the pre-reading stage. The present study depicts the application of the automated text analysis system the TextEvaluator as an effective tool that helps analyze texts on eight dimensions of text complexity as follows: syntactic complexity; academic vocabulary; word unfamiliarity; word concreteness; lexical cohesion; interactive style; level of argumentation; degree of narrativity, with further summarizing them with an overall genre-dependent complexity score. This research examines the complexity dimensions of English informational texts of four genres – legal, linguistic, news, and medical – that are used for teaching reading comprehension to EFL (English as a foreign language) pre-service teachers and translators at universities in Ukraine. The data obtained with the help of the TextEvaluator has shown that English legal texts are the most difficult for reading comprehension in comparison to linguistic, news, and medical texts. In contrast, medical texts are the least challenging out of the four genres compared. The TextEvaluator has provided insight into the complexity of English informational texts across their different genres that would be useful for assembling the corpora of reading passages scaled on specific dimensions of text complexity that predict text difficulty to EFL pre-service teachers and translators.

scholarly journals Automated Complexity Assessment of English Informational Texts for EFL Pre-service Teachers and Translators

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-164
Author(s):  
Valentyna Parashchuk ◽  
Laryssa Yarova ◽  
Stepan Parashchuk
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Informational Texts ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Text Complexity ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Vocabulary Word ◽  
Analysis System ◽  
Complexity Assessment ◽  
Insight Into

Automated text complexity assessment tools are of enormous practical value in solving the time-consuming task of analyzing English informational texts for their complexity at the pre-reading stage. The present study depicts the application of the automated text analysis system the TextEvaluator as an effective tool that helps analyze texts on eight dimensions of text complexity as follows: syntactic complexity; academic vocabulary; word unfamiliarity; word concreteness; lexical cohesion; interactive style; level of argumentation; degree of narrativity, with further summarizing them with an overall genre-dependent complexity score. This research examines the complexity dimensions of English informational texts of four genres – legal, linguistic, news, and medical – that are used for teaching reading comprehension to EFL (English as a foreign language) pre-service teachers and translators at universities in Ukraine. The data obtained with the help of the TextEvaluator has shown that English legal texts are the most difficult for reading comprehension in comparison to linguistic, news, and medical texts. In contrast, medical texts are the least challenging out of the four genres compared. The TextEvaluator has provided insight into the complexity of English informational texts across their different genres that would be useful for assembling the corpora of reading passages scaled on specific dimensions of text complexity that predict text difficulty to EFL pre-service teachers and translators.

Associative lexical cohesion as a factor in text complexity

2014 ◽  
Vol 165 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Flor ◽  
Beata Beigman Klebanov
Keyword(s):  
Grade Level ◽  
Quantitative Measure ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Informational Texts ◽  
Text Complexity ◽  
Normalized Mutual Information ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Text Cohesion

In this paper we present an application of associative lexical cohesion to the analysis of text complexity as determined by expert-assigned US school grade levels. Lexical cohesion in a text is represented as a distribution of pairwise positive normalized mutual information values. Our quantitative measure of lexical cohesion is Lexical Tightness (LT), computed as average of such values per text. It represents the degree to which a text tends to use words that are highly inter-associated in the language. LT is inversely correlated with grade levels and adds significantly to the amount of explained variance when estimating grade level with a readability formula. In general, simpler texts are more lexically cohesive and complex texts are less cohesive. We further demonstrate that lexical tightness is a very robust measure. We compute lexical tightness for a whole text and also across segmental units of a text. While texts are more cohesive at the sentence level than at the paragraph or whole-text levels, the same systematic variation of lexical tightness with grade level is observed for all levels of segmentation. Measuring text cohesion at various levels uncovers a specific genre effect: informational texts are significantly more cohesive than literary texts, across all grade levels.

Emergent Bilinguals With Specific Reading Comprehension Deficits: A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 002221942098324
Author(s):  
Ana Taboada Barber ◽  
Susan Lutz Klauda ◽  
Weimeng Wang ◽  
Kelly B. Cartwright ◽  
Laurie E. Cutting
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Oral Language ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Reading Engagement ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Inference Making ◽  
Poor Reading ◽  
Emergent Bilingual ◽  
Specific Reading ◽  
Insight Into

This study centered on emergent bilingual (EB) students with specific reading comprehension deficits (S-RCD), that is, with poor reading comprehension despite solid word identification skills. The participants were 209 students in Grades 2 to 4, including both EBs and English Monolinguals (EMs) with and without S-RCD. Mean comparisons indicated that EBs and EMs with S-RCD showed weaknesses relative to typically developing (TD) readers in oral language, word identification, inference making, and reading engagement, but not in executive functioning. Longitudinal analyses indicated that across two academic years S-RCD persisted for 41% of EBs and EMs alike. Altogether, the study extends research on EBs with S-RCD by identifying variables beyond oral language that may account for their reading comprehension difficulties and providing insight into the extent to which their reading comprehension and word identification performance levels evolve during elementary school. Furthermore, the findings point to the importance of early identification and intervention for weaknesses in reading comprehension and its component elements in both EBs and EMS.

scholarly journals And You Will Be Amazed: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Greek Magical Papyri

2020 ◽  
Vol 21-22 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Radcliffe G. Edmonds
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Traditional Authority ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Dominant Strategies ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractAn analysis of the rhetorical strategies used in the so-called Greek Magical Papyri to bolster the authority of the authors provides insight into the authors of these texts and their intended audiences. This article reviews the scholarship on the identity of the composers of the Greek Magical Papyri and explores the rhetorical strategies used in the texts to create authority, before comparing the dominant strategies in the Greek Magical Papyri with similar ones in other kinds of recipe collections, specifically alchemical and medical texts. The authors of the recipes in the Greek Magical Papyri make little use of the traditional authority of the temples but instead justify their claims of superiority with reference to the amazing efficacy of the procedures they describe. The direct, second person address in formulas such as “and you will be amazed” suggests that the intended audience was imagined not as potential clients who need to be convinced of the author’s expertise, but rather as potential practitioners interested in impressing their own clients.

Examining Young Children's Computational Artifacts

2021 ◽  
pp. 265-294
Author(s):  
Apittha Unahalekhaka ◽  
Madhu Govind
Keyword(s):  
Computational Thinking ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Project Portfolio ◽  
Creative Coding ◽  
Insight Into

Computational thinking (CT), in line with the constructionist perspective, is often best displayed when children have the opportunity to demonstrate their skills by producing creative coding artifacts. Performance-based or project portfolio assessments of young children's coding artifacts are a rich and useful approach to explore how children develop and apply CT abilities. In this chapter, the authors examine various rubrics and assessment tools used to measure the levels of programming competency, creativity, and purposefulness displayed in students' coding artifacts. The authors then discuss the development of ScratchJr and KIBO project rubrics for researchers and educators, including examples to illustrate how these highly diverse projects provide insight into children's CT abilities. Finally, the authors conclude with implications and practical strategies for using rubrics in both educational and research settings.

Design of a Web-Based Sentence Analysis System to Support EFL Reading Instruction

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Yea-Ru Tsai ◽  
Yukon Chang
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Comprehension Process ◽  
On Line ◽  
Analysis System ◽  
Experimental Group

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an on-line Cumulative Sentence Analysis (CSA) instruction on university engineering students' English reading comprehension. Within the framework of CSA instruction, the reading comprehension process can be divided into six steps: identifying finite verbs, finding key words, separating clauses, identifying subjects and main verbs, adding words stepwise, and translating the sentence. The results showed that the experimental group achieved a higher level of reading comprehension performance following the instruction. Inter-group comparison also revealed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in the post-test, while no difference was found between these groups in the pretest. The findings clearly demonstrated that on-line CSA instruction is an efficient and feasible approach to helping engineering students cope with their problems of reading English texts.

Roles of morphological awareness in the reading comprehension of Spanish-speaking language minority learners: Exploring partial mediation by vocabulary and reading fluency

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL J. KIEFFER ◽  
GINA BIANCAROSA ◽  
JEANNETTE MANCILLA-MARTINEZ
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Reading Fluency ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Language Minority ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Reading Vocabulary ◽  
Language Minority Learners ◽  
Vocabulary Word

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority learners reading in English. Multivariate path analysis was used to investigate the unique contribution of derivational morphological awareness to reading comprehension as well as its indirect contributions via three hypothesized mediators for students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade (N = 101). Results indicated a significant unique contribution of morphological awareness, controlling for phonemic decoding, listening comprehension, reading vocabulary, word reading fluency, and passage reading fluency. Results further indicated significant indirect contributions of morphological awareness via reading vocabulary and passage fluency, but not via word reading fluency. Findings suggest that morphological awareness may play multiple important roles in second-language reading comprehension.

Variable Insight in OCD

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca J. Hamblin ◽  
Jennifer Moonjung Park ◽  
Monica S. Wu ◽  
Eric A. Storch
Keyword(s):  
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Schizophrenia Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often have good insight into the irrational nature of their obsessions and the excessive character of their compulsions, but insight exists along a continuum and is markedly poor in some patients. This chapter reviews the assessment and phenomenological correlates of variable insight in OCD in both pediatric and adult populations. It reviews the definition of insight and its relationship to the evolution of diagnostic criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as the major assessment tools used to measure and quantify insight for clinical and research purposes. The relationships between insight and clinical characteristics of OCD, including symptom severity, comorbidity, and treatment response are reviewed, followed by a review of neurobiological correlates of insight and the relationship between poor insight and schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Using Anticipation Guides to Support Comprehension of Science Informational Text

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-148
Author(s):  
Nicole S. Fenty
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Informational Text ◽  
Advance Organizers ◽  
Advance Organizer ◽  
Informational Texts ◽  
Students With Learning Disabilities ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Students With Ld

Students with learning disabilities (LD) in reading often struggle to succeed due to difficulties with reading comprehension. Comprehension difficulties can impact access to a variety of text types, including informational texts. Researchers suggest that students with LD in reading require explicit comprehension supports before, during, and after reading. This article outlines the use of a comprehension tool, anticipation guides (AGs), a type of advance organizer especially suited for use with informational text. A brief summary of the literature surrounding the use of advance organizers in elementary settings is provided. General steps for planning and adapting instruction using AGs are also included. In addition, planning and instructional steps are contextualized using a science illustration. Finally, conclusions are offered.

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