Abstract

Reading is important for any language learner, but the difficulty level of the text needs to match a reader’s level to enable efficient learning of new vocabulary. Many widely used traditional readability measures are not effective for those who speak English as a second or additional language. This study examines English readability for Vietnamese native speakers (VL1). A collection of text difficulty judgements of nearly 100 English text passages was obtained from 12 VL1 participants, using a 5-point Likert scale. Using the same basic features found in traditional English readability measures we found that SVMs and Dale-Chall features were slightly better than linear models using either Flesch or Dale-Chall. VL1 participants’ text judgements were strongly correlated with their past IELTS test scores. This study introduces a first approximation to readability of English text for VL1, with suggestions for further improvements.