TITLE:
Non-Native English Speaker Readability Metric: Reading Speed and Comprehension
AUTHORS:
Aissa Boudjella, Mukti Sharma, Deepti Sharma
KEYWORDS:
Readability, Reading Speed, Software Readability, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning-Fog Score, Coleman-Liau Index, Smog Index, Automatic Readability Index, Linear Regression
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics,
Vol.5 No.6,
June
19,
2017
ABSTRACT: This paper presents an investigation to evaluate the reading speed and reading comprehension of non-native English speaking students by presenting a simple analytical model. For this purpose, various readability softwares were used to estimate the average grade level of the given texts. The relationship between the score obtained by the students and their reading speed under average grade level 9 and 14 using font size 12 and 14 is presented. The experimental results show that the reading speed and the score versus the students may be explained by a linear regression. Reading speed decreases as the score decreases. The students with a higher magnitude of reading speed scored better marks. More importantly, we find that the reading speed of our students is lower than the native English speakers. This approach of modeling the readability in linear form significantly simplifies the readability analysis.