Author(s)

Yutong Xiao ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Education, Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, China

Corresponding Author

Yutong Xiao

ABSTRACT

This study researches 3 compulsory volumes and 4 selective compulsory volumes of senior high school English textbooks(version A), using Coh-Metrix and the Compleat Lexical Tutor to analyze the Coh-Metrix L2 readability level, five indices(narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, deep cohesion) in Coh-Metrix and the proportion of academic words of their reading texts. The findings are: Overall the reading texts in the selective compulsory modules are more difficult than those in the compulsory modules, but the progressive relationship between the 2 modules is unclear. Scores of the five indices and the proportion of academic words fluctuate across different volumes, but with a general trend of increasing difficulty from compulsory modules to selective compulsory modules, except for the narrativity scores and AW ratio. This study employs a quantitative method to assess textbook difficulty, with the aim of providing insights for future textbook compilation and the enhancement of English teaching practices.

KEYWORDS

Difficulty, Reading Texts, Senior High School English Textbooks

CITE THIS PAPER

Yutong Xiao, A Reading Text Difficulty Analysis of Senior High School English Textbooks (Version A). Curriculum and Teaching Methodology (2025) Vol. 8: 1-6. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/curtm.2025.080501.

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