Measuring Text Complexity

Common Core Resources: 5 Technology Tools To Measure Text Complexity

1. Online Databases

These should probably be at the top of your list when when looking for online text. Many schools, districts, and public libraries across the country pay subscription fees for online database collections like Badgerlink and GALE. These are mostly free tools for students and teachers — they are paid subscriptions, but the costs are typically covered elsewhere. Included databases in those services vary depending upon subscription, but check the search options for either Lexile number or Lexile range.

You can check the Lexile website for a list of database providers that include Lexile information as part of their service. Even if your school or district doesn’t pay for these types of databases, chances are good that your public library does. And if you are lucky enough to have a certified librarian in your school, be sure to befriend him/her. They are incredible resources for finding grade-appropriate material and assisting with anything related to information literacy.

2. GoogleSearch by Reading Level

This is a decent starting point if you’re using Google’s search engine. In any GoogleSearch, you can go into the “Advanced” search options and choose to filter by basic, intermediate, and/or advanced reading level. Daniel Russel’s blog post about this feature explains how they designed this filter: “We paid teachers to classify pages for different reading levels, and then took their classifications to build a model of the intrinsic complexity of the text. . . We also used data from Google Scholar, since most of the articles in Scholar are considered advanced.”

In Google’s classification, “basic” equates to an elementary level while “intermediate” would apply more to the secondary or 6-12 grade level range. Advanced would indicate scholarly or post-secondary text. Because these ranges are so broad though, it might help to start by limiting a search to either “basic” or “intermediate” and then use a tool below to gather more detailed information.

3. JuicyStudio

If you have a URL and you’d like to check its readability scale, you can paste the URL into this website’s readability test. It will run the page through its algorithm to figure out the reading level. This free service also tabulates how many words & sentences are in the page, as well as counting how many words have 1, 2, 3, or 4 syllables. There are explanations for what the different reading indexes reveal. Lexile numbers aren’t specifically identified, but other indexes are used (including Gunning-Fogg and Flesch-Kincaid).

4. EditCentral

Like JuicyStudio, EditCentral is a free tool that runs text through an algorithm for various readability indexes. Instead of pasting in a URL, though, this site allows you to paste in text (up to 50,000 characters). This one also doesn’t provide Lexile information, but it does color code the results of the different reading scales, and it also underlines words that might be considered complex or difficult. That is usually determined by number of syllables, but it could serve as a good way to anticipate words that may increase the level of difficulty.

5. StoryToolz

Akin to EditCentral, you can paste in text (up to 5K without a login, up to 50K with a login), and it will generate several reports. It uses similar indexes (not Lexile) for determining readability scores, but this site generates additional reports that could aid in writing instruction. The “Word Usage” report gives statistics on items like “to be” verbs and prepositions while the “Sentence Beginnings” report identifies how many times different parts of speech start a sentence.

In addition to the tools listed above, you can also utilize the Lexile Analyzer. If you create an account, you can upload a .txt document of up to 1000 words for free analysis. Educators can request access to the professional version for longer documents. Certain formatting and steps are required prior to upload (details are on the website).

These are the web-based tools I’ve found that may help with quantitative evaluation, and you can even use a non web-based program like Microsoft Word to give you a basic Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, it’s important to keep in mind that this is only one facet of a reading selection and should never be used as the sole basis for determining complexity. It is, however, a good place to start, especially as we try to discover diverse, timely, and relevant web content for our learners.