The Study On Measurement Of Language Difficulty Of Advanced Chinese Intensive Reading Textbooks

Based on the introduction of readability research, this thesis, focusing on the problems in advanced Chinese intensive reading textbooks, discusses the elements that influence its language difficulty and advances five important variables: (1) the number of the third and forth level and out-syllabus characters by an average per 100 characters, (2) the number of the third and forth level and out-syllabus words by an average per 100 characters, (3) the number of set phrases by an average per 100 characters, (4) the average sentence length, and (5) the number of the third and forth level and out-syllabus grammatical items by an average per 100 characters.With the analysis of HSK(high level) papers and investigation of textbook users, this thesis analyses three advanced Chinese intensive reading textbooks, and discusses their moderate regions of characters, words, phrases, sentences, grammar items and difficulty index which are as follows: the region of the third level and forth level and out-syllabus characters by an average per 100 characters is 3-7 characters, the region of the third and forth level and out-syllabus words by an average per 100 characters is 10-20 words, the region of phrases by an average per 100 characters is less than 2 idioms, average sentence length is 20-40 characters, the region of the third and forth level and out-syllabus grammatical sets by an average per 100 characters is less than 2 sets, and the region of difficulty index is 30-60.Meanwhile, this thesis creates a formula to estimate the language difficulty of textbooks according to the ratio of every variable which is as follows: Y=0.95X1+0.975(X2+X3)+X4 + X5, where Y=difficulty index, X1= the number of the third level and forth level and out-syllabus characters by an average per 100 characters, X2 = the number of the third and forth level and out-syllabus words by an average per 100 characters, X3= the number of phrases by an average per 100 characters, X4= average sentence length and X5= the number of the third and forth level and out-syllabus grammatical items by an average per 100 characters.At the end, this thesis discusses its theoretic and practical meaning, its limitation and implications for further research.