Evaluating two high intermediate efl and esl textbooks: a comparative study based on readability indices
Evaluating two high intermediate efl and esl textbooks: a comparative study based on readability indices

Summary/Abstract: This study aimed to evaluate “High–Intermediate 3” (Iran Language Institute, 2008) and “New Headway Upper–Intermediate” Soars1 in terms of their readability levels. To this end, the readability of ten and 12 reading passages of the two textbooks taught to the students of English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) at the same level of language proficiency, respectively, was analyzed via the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) and Coh–Metrix Easability Score (CMES) consisting of narrativity (NAR), syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, deep cohesion, verb cohesion, connectivity, and temporality components. The results showed although the FRESs are developed on reading passages written for native speakers of English, they correlate very highly not only with the CMES but also with its NAR component obtained on the passages written for ESL students, indicating that the FRESs are valid readability measures of ESL texts as well. The FRES and CMES did not, however, correlate significantly with each other on EFL texts, indicating that the EFL and ESL texts differ from each other in terms of readability. The results are discussed from the perspective of micro structural approach to schema theory and suggestions are made for future research.

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