Development of an Algorithm for Testing Vocabulary-Based Reading-Level Suitability of English Book Readers

Abstract

It is very important for a book reader to choose an appropriate book which is suitable for the reader's reading-level for a successful reading. Especially, when a reader choose a foreign book, more attention needs to be paid because the book's readability-level and the reader's reading-level have to be considered simultaneously. In case of English books that are sold or published in Korea, somewhat objective readability levels of them can be estimated to some degree by referring to the levels of difficulty which are developed by institutes in the U.S.A. or Korea. However, because reader's reading-levels can be estimated through a long English test, many readers avoid taking such a test and subjectively estimate their reading-level. They are therefore likely to choose an English book which are not suitable for their reading-level. This paper, for Korean readers whose mother tongue is not English, proposes an algorithm which can help a reader find out his/her reading-level suitability for an English book by a short time English vocabulary test. We present our systematic process for extracting test words from a target English book and for estimating the level suitability between the book and the reader. In order to evaluate our algorithm, we implement it in a Web application and show survey results.