ERIC Number: EJ1047713
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Dec
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-5984
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Coh-Metrix Measures Text Characteristics at Multiple Levels of Language and Discourse
Graesser, Arthur C.; McNamara, Danielle S.; Cai, Zhiqang; Conley, Mark; Li, Haiying; Pennebaker, James
Elementary School Journal, v115 n2 p210-229 Dec 2014
Coh-Metrix analyzes texts on multiple measures of language and discourse that are aligned with multilevel theoretical frameworks of comprehension. Dozens of measures funnel into five major factors that systematically vary as a function of types of texts (e.g., narrative vs. informational) and grade level: narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, and deep (causal) cohesion. Texts are automatically scaled on these five factors with Coh-Metrix-TEA (Text Easability Assessor). This article reviews how these five factors account for text variations and reports analyses that augment Coh-Metrix in two ways. First, there is a composite measure called "formality", which increases with low narrativity, syntactic complexity, word abstractness, and high cohesion. Second, the words are analyzed with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, an automated system that measures words in texts on dozens of psychological attributes. One next step in automated text analyses is a topics analysis that scales the difficulty of conceptual topics.
Descriptors: Statistical Analysis, Guidelines, Syntax, Reading Comprehension, Connected Discourse, Instructional Program Divisions, Text Structure, Computational Linguistics, Personality Traits, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Rhetoric
University of Chicago Press. Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, IL 60637. Tel: 877-705-1878; Tel: 773-753-3347; Fax: 877-705-1879; Fax: 773-753-0811; e-mail: subscriptions@press.uchicago.edu; Web site: http://www.press.uchicago.edu
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation; Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Authoring Institution: N/A
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: BCS 0904909; DRK-12-0918409; REESE 1108845; R305G020018; R305A080589; R305C120001
Author Affiliations: N/A