Text complexity, the assessment of text difficulty, enables the selection of appropriate material for each grade level and contributes to cognitive development by connecting with the national education curriculum to produce an adequate reading content...
Text complexity, the assessment of text difficulty, enables the selection of appropriate material for each grade level and contributes to cognitive development by connecting with the national education curriculum to produce an adequate reading content. This effectively helps students reach the Achievement standards by greatly enhancing their learning achievements; furthermore, it is an important factor in enabling by-level teaching-learning in not only reading education but also in general education. But until now, research on text complexity has been centered on readability studies that take only text factors into account. However, it is difficult to analyze textbook text complexity of the process of learning to read, which takes place through learning activities, with solely textbook text factors. Therefore, in order to enhance the accuracy of textbook text complexity, text complexity analysis, with task factor taken into account, should be executed.
In this study, the goal is to elaborate task factor among the configuration factors of text complexity. Therefore, I review previous research on text complexity to determine the need for research on task factor and elaborate on it to search for ways to apply the information to text complexity. Because the study on text complexity was restrictively centered on CCSS, research on text level was examined comprehensively. In addition, by reviewing the research on the task of general language education, I re-conceptualized the task and through this restructured the text complexity model, which considers task factor.
By forging a task factor model, which consists of language complexity, cognitive demand, and task performance conditions, and initiating a confirmatory factor analysis, I secured reliability and feasibility. Also, because the object of this study is the reading unit of the korean language textbook, verification on step-by-step learning activities is necessary. Consequently, I additionally analyzed students’ perceptions and effects on step-by-step reading activities by configuring survey questions. Based on this, I provided a standard for text complexity task factor and applied it to the duplicate material of the korean language textbook reading unit. As a result, from the text complexity measurement, task factor appeared to be supplementing a large part of the limits of text factor.
This study explored ways to apply task factor to the text complexity study that had been centered on best factor. This is significant in that is raises the necessity for task factor studies and moreover proposes a new direction for text complexity studies. If, considering task factor, I make the text complexity formula more detailed, I will be able to obtain a more adequate result when determining text level. This will be able to contribute an objective standard in composing a learning activity based on text from textbook development or achievement level. Furthermore, it will provide the text appropriate to the learner’s reading level, which will help enhance the learner’s reading abilities.