Subjective and objective difficulty of English texts are related—but not the same

Evaluating the difficulty of English texts used in educational materials and language assessments is a central concern in English language education. Traditionally, researchers have relied on objective measures of text difficulty based on linguistic features, including characteri

Evaluating the difficulty of English texts used in educational materials and language assessments is a central concern in English language education. Traditionally, researchers have relied on objective measures of text difficulty based on linguistic features, including characteristics of words and sentences. However, learners can differ substantially in how difficult they perceive the same text to be.

To examine the relationship between objective and subjective text difficulty, the researchers investigated the extent to which objective estimates correspond with learners' perceptions. The work is published in the journal Reading and Writing.