Using the Web as a Source of Graded Reading Material for Language Acquisition

Abstract

Reading has been shown to be an important component of foreign language acquisition. However, to efficiently use reading for this purpose requires an extensive collection of graded reading material. I propose using the Web as a supplementary reading source. In this paper, I describe potential applications that present reading material to learners, and I pose research questions that will lead to an effective application. Important issues include the measurement of readability of text in order to match text difficulty to the level of the learner, profiling the learner, and whether there is suitable reading material for learners on the web. I summarise related prior work in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and foreign language reading skill acquisition, and report on some preliminary results on readability measurement. In particular, for foreign language reading, sentence length is well-correlated with readability, but vocabulary has a more complex relationship.