Workshop: Erwin Tschirner (Language Learning Series)

Assessing Text Difficulty

Texts are the foundation of a reading program. They need to be challenging enough to build students' reading proficiency but they also need to be understood. Text typology allows instructors to select those texts that are most conducive to building students' reading proficiency. In this workshop, we will first look closely at the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012 – Reading to see how reading proficiency interacts with text typology. We will then analyze short texts to determine their difficulty level with respect to the ACTFL Guidelines. Finally, we will look at an attempt from the Netherlands to classify literary texts according to their difficulty level and how these classifications relate to ACTFL Reading Proficiency levels.

For more information, please contact Eva Russo (erusso@wustl.edu)