Many of my faithful ( and less faithful) readers will know that there are methods of working out the "reading age" a piece of writing .... one bit of text might be understandable by a 6-year-old, another wouldn't be understood until you were, say, 18. Or, in fact, never.
This is quite important to us readers of books in "other languages" .... 2nd languages etc. Except at the extremes, it's very tricky for us to know whether a book will be easy-peasy or tricksy-dixie or brainy-strainy.
You would scarcely credit the vast army of formulas for working out the "reading age" of a passage. Most of them involve huge amounts of counting-up the number of syllables in the words, counting the number of sentences, the number of difficult words,counting the number of syllables again just to make sure, multiplying by ¾ , dividing by 13.83 .... all that sort of thing.
My method is much simpler ... it's my own invention of course.
It's specially designed for us lot reading in second/third etc languages.
Whatever you are reading, you find the hardest word in it. Easy.
Then you look it up in your various dictionaries.. usually you will go through a whole heap of them, in size order.. Eventually you will find it. We hope.
Pick up that dictionary, the least big one you could find it in.
Pop it on the kitchen scales.
OK .... say it weighs 240 grams. Reading age = 24 !
OR ..... say it weighs 870 grams. Reading age = 87 !
Simple!
Let's look at a few examples ... suppose the hardest word you can find on, say, a page of a novel is "fringale" as in "j'ai la fringale" ..well, you'd find that straight away in the Collin's Gem ...well, it's in mine anyway... which weighs in at 150 grams ..so the reading age is approx 15 . Kid's stuff !
Another book , another page ... suppose " baisemain" is the toughest word this time ...the "Gem" didn't have it, so I had to go to the next up, which is the Collins Robert ( Poche) ...it's there all right .. it means "kissing a lady's hand."
That one weighs in at 430 grams ... that's a reading age of 43 ..which is all right and proper, because young people shouldn't be reading that sort of book.
OK .. going well so far .... now you turn to a more specialist tome, and turning to page 77 you find "le phacochére" .. I had to up another size to get that one, a massive thing weighing 1570 grams. It means "wart-hog" by the way. Anyway, using my simple formula, that's a reading age of 157.... and quite right too.
Pretty accurate, you're thinking I bet.... a bit discouraging maybe, but it puts my "88 years" in some sort of perspective I reckon.
Maybe, just for a bit of balance, I ought to show you some of the "official" methods of calculating reading age, so here we go ... and a further thing ... all these tests are ( tacitly) referring to English texts ... from my own experience they do still give reasonable result for French, Welsh and Spanish texts .
Here's another thing ... you might have thought my own patent method was rubbish, but after you've read these, you might think .. mmmmm ... how sensible.
[a] The Automated Readability Index (ARI)
The Automated Readability Index (ARI) is a readability test designed to assess the understandability of a text. Like other popular readability formulas, the ARI formula outputs a number which approximates the grade level needed to comprehend the text. For example, if the ARI outputs the number 10, this equates to a high school student, ages 15-16 years old; a number 3 means students in 3rd grade (ages 8-9 yrs. old) should be able to comprehend the text.
The Automated Readability Index is derived from ratios representing word difficulty (number of letters per word) and sentence difficulty (number of words per sentence). The first consideration in developing the Automated Readability Index was to establish that the factors used relate to those found in other indices. The factor relating to sentence structure (average number of words per sentence) is identical to that found in most currently used indices , such as the Coleman-Liau Index, so no verification was required. The verification of the relationship between the word structure factor was also virtually self-evident.
Most readability indices consist of two factors. One factor relates to sentence structure and is most generally a measure of the average number of words per sentence. The other factor generally relates to word structure and is usually based on either the proportion of easy words determined with reference to word list (Dale and Chall, 1948) or the average number of syllables per word (Flesch, 1951). While the word list has many advantages, especially in 4th lower grades, it is both slow and relatively inaccurate when applied to adult reading material. Syllable counts prove to be deceptively unreliable.
Here is the formula to calculate the Automated Readability Index:
[1] You divide the number of letters by the number of words..... then multiply your answer by 4.71 ... call your answer W
[2] You divide the number of words by the number of sentences ... then halve it ... call your answer S
[3] Add your two results ( W + S) then subtract 21.43
Your final result is the Automated Readability index...it's the (US) school grade level that would be able to read the passage easily....read on .. luckily there's a table of US grade levels in case, for some odd reason, you aren't familiar withe them ...
The Automated Readability Index outputs a number that approximates the age needed to understand the text. As a rough guide, US grade level 1 corresponds to ages 6 to 8. Reading level grade 8 corresponds to the typical reading level of a 14 year-old US child. Grade 12, the highest US secondary school grade before college, corresponds to the reading level of a 17 year old.
Here is a breakdown of grade levels in the U.S.:
5-6 yrs. old — Kindergarten
6-7 yrs. old — First Grade
7-8 yrs. old — Second Grade
8-9 yrs. old — Third Grade
9-10 yrs. old — Fourth Grade
10-11 yrs. old — Fifth Grade
11-12 yrs. old — Sixth Grade
12-13 yrs. old — Seventh Grade
13-14 yrs. old — Eighth Grade
14-15 yrs. old — Ninth Grade
15-16 yrs. old — Tenth Grade
16-17 yrs. old — Eleventh grade
17-18 yrs. old — Twelfth grade
18-22 yrs. old - College
Here's a worked example for your entertainment ... here's the sample they used ...
The rule of rhythm in prose is not so intricate. Here, too, we write in groups, or phrases, as I prefer to call them, for the prose phrase is greatly longer and is much more nonchalantly uttered than the group in verse; so that not only is there a greater interval of continuous sound between the pauses, but, for that very reason, word is linked more readily to word by a more summary enunciation. Still, the phrase is the strict analogue of the group, and successive phrases, like successive groups, must differ openly in length and rhythm. The rule of scansion in verse is to suggest no measure but the one in hand; in prose, to suggest no measure at all. Prose must be rhythmical, and it may be as much so as you will; but it must not be metrical. It may be anything, but it must not be verse.
The Automated Readability Index of this sample text is 10.6 or 11 (always round up the final number). If we look at our grade level chart from above, the final output of 11 means high school students should be able to comprehend this text. Ages below 16 years old will find this passage difficult to read and understand.
Here are the final results of the sample text:
Total # of words: 151
Average # of words per sentence: 25
Total # of sentences: 6
Total # of characters: 623
Average # of characters per word: 4.1
Total # of words with 3+ syllables: 14
Percent of 3+ syllables in text: 9%
Average # of syllables per word: 1
Total syllables in text: 206
Automated Readability Index: 10.6
Grade level needed to comprehend your text: 15-17 yrs. old (Tenth to Eleventh graders)
[b] the "FOG index
The FOG Index was devised by Robert Gunning in 1952. And whilst he was an American it would also appear that he was, for some time, Professor of English at Oxford University in England, the oldest university in any English speaking country.
In 1944, Gunning formed his own readability consultancy. His goal with this company was to make newspapers more readable.
Previous to this most books and newspapers had been written with limited concern as to the readers’ abilities. If you look back to children’s books around this time the variation between them and adult books is more on topic than vocabulary.
The calculation used to reach the Index on any work is:
1) Take a 100 word extract (ending at a full stop).
2) Count the number of sentences in this section.
3) Divide 100 by the number of sentences. This will show the average sentence length (ASL).
4) Count the number of long words (NLW), those that have 3 syllables or more.
5) Add the ASL and NLW then multiply by 0.4. This will equal the FOG Index.
[c] The " Flesch" formula
The Flesch Reading Ease Readability Formula
The specific mathematical formula is:
RE = 206.835 – (1.015 x ASL) – (84.6 x ASW)
RE = Readability Ease
ASL = Average Sentence Length (i.e., the number of words divided by the number of sentences)
ASW = Average number of syllables per word (i.e., the number of syllables divided by the number of words)
The output, i.e., RE is a number ranging from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the easier the text is to read.
• Scores between 90.0 and 100.0 are considered easily understandable by an average 5th grader.
• Scores between 60.0 and 70.0 are considered easily understood by 8th and 9th graders.
• Scores between 0.0 and 30.0 are considered easily understood by college graduates.