Exploring Perceived Difficulty of Graded Reader Texts

Although proponents of extensive reading (ER) have recommended easy reading material, book difficulty has been poorly defined and operationalized in previous studies. The present study argues for the use of perceived text difficulty for operationalizing book difficulty based on empirical findings (H...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inReading in a Foreign Language Vol. 34; no. 2; pp. 249 - 270
Main Author Arai, Yuya
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published National Foreign Language Resource Center at University of Hawaii 01.10.2022
Subjects
Difficulty Level
English (Second Language)
Foreign Countries
Rating Scales
Reading Instruction
Reading Materials
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Student Attitudes
Undergraduate Students
Japan
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Summary:Although proponents of extensive reading (ER) have recommended easy reading material, book difficulty has been poorly defined and operationalized in previous studies. The present study argues for the use of perceived text difficulty for operationalizing book difficulty based on empirical findings (Holster et al., 2017), reading purposes in ER, and the importance of readers' perspectives. A total of 162 Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language university students rated the difficulty of 15 texts excerpted from graded readers (GRs). The data were analyzed by conducting a many-facet Rasch analysis (Linacre, 1989; Rasch, 1960/1980), where a rating scale model (Andrich, 1978) was tested with persons, texts, and graded readers' levels as the facets of measurement. The results revealed that perceived text difficulty could not replicate the stated difficulty level provided by the GR publisher, reinforcing the necessity of examining perceived text difficulty in ER research and practice in the second and foreign language classroom.