A readability level prediction tool for K-12 books

The readability level of a book is a useful measure for children and teenagers (teachers, parents, and librarians, respectively) to identify reading materials suitable for themselves (their K-12 readers, respectively). Unfortunately, majority of published books are assigned a readability level range, such as K-3, instead of a single readability level for their intended readers, by professionals, which is not useful to the end-users who look for books at a particular grade level. This leads to the development of readability formulas/analysis tools. These formulas/tools, however, require at least an excerpt of a book to estimate its readability level, which is a severe constraint due to copyright laws that often prohibit book content from being made publicly accessible. To alleviate the text constraint imposed on readability analysis on books, we have developed TRoLL, which relies heavily on metadata of books that is publicly and readily accessible from reputable book-affiliated online...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: JASIS
• Authors: Joel Denning, Maria Soledad Pera, Yiu-Kai Ng
• Keywords: Algorithms, JASIS 2016