International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Towards a Text Classification Profile per Level of English Language Competence: Intermediate vs. Advanced Reading Comprehension Texts
Dr. Trisevgeni Liontou

Abstract
The aim of the present study was to examine the existence of any statistically significant lexicogrammatical differences between intermediate and advanced reading comprehension exam texts of the Greek State Certificate of English Language Proficiency national exams in order to better define text complexity per level of competence. Through Coh-Metrix 2.1, LIWC2007, VocabProfile 3.0, CLAN suite of programs, CPIDR 3.0, Gramulator and Text Analyzer 135 text indices were estimated with regard to thirty-four authentic intermediate reading comprehension texts used between November 2003 and November 2011 examination periods and twenty-nine advanced texts used between April 2005 and May 2012 examination periods. The statistical analysis revealed significant differences between intermediate and advanced reading comprehension texts for a specific number of text features such as word, sentence and paragraph length, levels of word frequency, lexical richness and text entropy, proportion of passive sentences and presence of words with rich conceptual content. The main outcome of the research is the Text Classification Profile that includes a qualitative and quantitative description of lexicogrammatical features pertinent in intermediate and advanced reading comprehension exam texts.

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