Readability Formulas For EFL

EFL/ESL teachers use English readability formulas to match texts to their students’ reading levels. However, the formulas’ validity for EFL/ESL use has gone largely untested. Two studies have now addressed this issue, with divergent results. Brown (1998) found that classic formulas were not very accurate predictors of EFL difficulty, while Greenfield (1999) found that they predicted for EFL about as well as they did for native English readers. Both studies produced accurate EFL readability formulas. In the analysis presented here, the difference in the two studies’ findings is attributed to Brown's random passage set. Brown’s formula proves more accurate with the other study’s passages than with his own, agreeing with observed EFL difficulty and predictions by classic formulas. This supports the finding that the classic formulas are valid for EFL use. EFL/ESL教師は英語読解難易度推定式を使って学生の読解力水準に合った英文を選定する。しかし、これまでこの推定式のEFL/ESLにおける有効性については殆ど検証されていなかった。この問題については、現在までに二つの考察がなされたが、それぞれの結果は異なっている。ブラウン(1998年)