Instructions (As appear on the download)

Beta Test Version

Reading Difficulty adds tools to help teachers quickly analyse any document for difficult words and then either simplify these words or teach them. This software is open source and licensed under Creative Commons.

If you’d like to share the tools, please share the link: https://sites.google.com/view/rdpt/ where you will always get the latest version.

Install me!

Installation should be painless, but here is the guide!

Once you have read this, you can delete this text! Don’t worry it’s available at

Reading Power Tools → About RDPT

Doc Wordlist

The Document Wordlist organises all of the words in your document into a convenient side tab where you can look up the meaning, thesaurus and images from the noun project.

Doc Low Freq Words

This shows all the low frequency words from your document in the sidebar.

◫ Add Low frequency Word Table

This adds a table to your document with all the low frequency words, links to the dictionary and a space to put notes.

🔍Difficulty Guide

The difficulty guide gives you an analysis of your document including:

Flesch Score

The Flesch score is a score based on the syllables in a word and the length of sentences. Complex sentences with complex words are much harder to read. It will tell you if this is Good, Challenging or Difficult. It will also let you know if a document has Long sentences. (Anything above 25 words per sentence. The UK Government has a great doc explaining this.)

You can open ▶ to see more details. You know you want to see those hidden stats!

Vocabulary Difficulty

These tools will check the vocabulary in your document and show you where your words lie on this scale. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) has further details.

Beginner (A1)

• Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type.

• Can introduce themselves and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where they live, people they know and things they have.

• Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.

Elementary

• Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).

• Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters.

• Can describe in simple terms aspects of their background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need.

Intermediate

• Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc.

• Can deal with most situations likely to arise while travelling in an area where the language is spoken.

• Can produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest.

• Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Upper intermediate

• Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialization.

• Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.

• Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

Difficult Words (Low frequency)

These are words that only proficient users would be expected to understand unless they have been directly taught them.

Reading Time

These times are based on the meta analysis that Marc Brysbaert did. Reading analyses are based on wpm (a word is 5 characters), the average grade 4 child will read at 150 wpm (2.5 words per second) if they are familiar with the vocabulary. (A young adult will read at 180wpm)

High Frequency Word List

You can see the word lists being used. These are based on the research that I did for Taylor's University and then completely forgot about! They've been given an update for 2020 and are now in the app.

▦Create Sheet

You can create a Google Sheet either all of the words in your doc or the low frequency words. Please note that this might take a few minutes to generate.

Highlighting

You can highlight low frequency words in place, highlight word types according to the Rainbow grammar series. You can unhighlight using the highlight tool and highlighted colours will appear in the custom colours. The colour scheme is:

🟩 highlight nouns

🟥 highlight verbs

🟦 highlight adjectives

🟨 highlight adverbs

⬜ unknown word

With Thanks to

• My wife for always being there for me.

• The Thursday PD team who have been most encouraging,

• Adam Morris for his coding contributions and always being enthusiastic!

• Shashi who demonstrated the usefulness of Gscripts

• Fiona Wattam - For spotting the academics bug

• Eric Burton - For suggesting the Ngram feature

• Paul Baumgarten for inspiring this app!

Reading Difficulty Power Tools by James Abela is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.