2015 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Mobile system to monitor extensive reading
| Project/Area Number |
25370643
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| Research Institution | Fukuoka University |
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Principal Investigator |
Holster Trevor 福岡大学, 言語教育研究センター, 講師 (40612403)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
W・R PELLOWE 近畿大学, 工学部, 講師 (30330327)
Lake J 福岡女学院大学, 英語教育研究センター, 講師 (60610235)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
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| Keywords | Extensive reading / Book difficulty / Reading ability / Vocabulary level / Rasch analysis / Facets analysis |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
We developed an open-source internet based system for monitoring extensive reading. The system collects student ratings of the difficulty of books and formats the data for analysis using the Facets software package for many-faceted Rasch analysis. This allows the ability of students and the difficulty of books to be measured so that teachers can guide students as to appropriate level books to read.
The monitoring system is freely available for any researcher to download and use and the methodology we used has been shared with the Extensive Reading Foundation and contributed to the revised monitoring system they produced.
The research data was used to measure the difficulty of approximately 1000 books and approximately 300 books were chosen for further analysis. We researched test features that contributed to book difficulty and compared three different systems for rating book difficulty: the Yomiyasusa Levels, the Extensive Reading Foundation Levels, and the Lexile Framework. The length of the book was a very strong predictor of book difficulty, with average sentence length a moderate predictor, and vocabulary frequency a very weak predictor. The Yomiyasusa Levels, which are based on book length, were a very strong predictor of book difficulty, with the Lexile Level a moderate predictor. The Extensive Reading Foundation levels, which are based on vocabulary frequency, were a very weak predictor of book difficulty.
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