A multilevel analysis of the linguistic features affecting Chinese text readability

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the characteristics of text comprehension. We use an approach that includes 32 linguistic features from four main levels (word, semantic, syntactic, and cohesive) that relate to Chinese text readability. The aim is to overcome the restrictions that resulted from adopting only surface linguistic features in investigating text readability in the past. In the present study, the research materials include 386 texts from Chinese textbooks for Taiwan elementary school students in six grades. The texts are reasonably assumed to increase in complexity of readability from grade 1 to grade 6. The readability of each of the 32 features is derived from the statistical trend analysis with respect to the grades. It is hoped that the results of this study can be of significant use in teaching Chinese reading in Chinese as a second language.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)95-126
Number of pages32
Journal臺灣華語教學研究
Issue number13
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Chinese text readability
  • multilevel linguistic features
  • elementary-school texts
  • statistical tendency analysis
  • 中文文本閱讀難易度
  • 多層次語言特徵
  • 小學教科書文本
  • 統計學趨向分析

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A multilevel analysis of the linguistic features affecting Chinese text readability'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this