Readability of professional and administrative texts in Czech - why to study it and how to measure it?
Abstract
Text comprehension is one of the key skills that are learned during the school years. On the one hand, reading literacy is fundamental for successful comprehension, on the other hand, comprehension success is determined by textual features, i.e. its readability.
Text readability thus presents an important issue - from both the reception (people may not be able to comprehend a text fully due to its low readability) and production perspective (people may not be able to produce a well readable text). The current study presents an experimental method for measuring readability of Czech texts of various genres based on the triangulation of (1) the rate of correct answers on comprehension questions, (2) intra-textual features, and (3) subjective assessment of text readability.
The method is discussed in depth and individual steps are illustrated on an example of a research in progress under the project Linguistic Factors of Readability in Czech Administrative and Educational Texts.