Text Complexity and Reading Comprehension Tests

The volume explores the relation between the complexity of written texts and the difficulty of reading comprehension tests. The results are based on a specially compiled corpus of internationally recognised EFL reading tests at different levels of proficiency. It brings together quantitative and qualitative linguistic investigation into the text-inherent complexity of the tests and a study of the data derived from their live administration to groups of Italian university students. The former area of research draws mainly on corpus and text analysis methodologies and on linguistic analyses of co-reference and other cohesive resources occurring in the input texts and between the texts and the tasks. The latter, by contrast, is informed by research on language testing, and, in particular, on findings and methods of Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory for the study of test difficulty. Some of these were used to analyse and interpret both the data obtained from the administration of the tests and the data collected by means of evaluative questionnaires that test takers were asked to complete. The application of such diverse methodologies and analyses revealed interesting correlations between the aspects of linguistic text-inherent complexity investigated and between some of them and the perceived and actual difficulty of the tests.