- Complexity Of Text Complexity Of Thoughtthoughtfull English Language Arts
- Complexity Of Text Complexity Of Thoughtthoughtfull English Version
One major shift brought on by the adoption of college and career readiness standards in classrooms as well as in Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) assessments is the focus on text complexity. In schools all over the country teachers are gathering diverse text types, some of which may be entirely new to students, in an effort to prepare. Syntactic Complexity Analyser (Lu 2010), a computational system designed to au-tomate the analysis of syntactic complexity of writing samples produced by college-level L2 English learners using a wide range of measures, we apply a comprehen-sive set of 10 syntactic complexity measures to large-scale college-level NNS.
Complexity
Nominalisation
Complexity Of Text Complexity Of Thoughtthoughtfull English Language Arts
Formal written English uses nouns more than verbs. For example, 'judgement' rather than 'judge', 'development' rather than 'develop', 'admiration' rather than 'admire'. Changing a verb or other word into a noun is called nominalisation.
Instead of:
This information enables us to formulate precise questions.
we would write:
This information enables the formulation of precise questions.
More examples are:
There appeared to be evidence of differential treatment of children.
This is reflected in our admiration for people who have made something of their lives, sometimes against great odds, and in our somewhat disappointed judgment of those who merely drift through life.
All airfields in the country would be nationalised, and the government would continue with the development of new aircraft as recommended by the Brabazon Committee.
Read the following text:
Reproduction with variation is a major characteristic of life. Without reproduction, life would quickly come to an end. The earliest single-celled organisms reproduced by duplicating their genetic material and then dividing in two. The two resulting daughter cells were identical to each other and to the parent cell, except for mutations that occurred during the process of gene duplication. Such errors, although rare, provided the raw material for biological evolution. The combination of reproduction and errors in the duplication of genetic material results in biological evolution, a change in the genetic composition of a population of organisms over time. W. K. Purves, D. Sadava, G. H. Orians & H. C. Heller, Life: The science of biology, W. H. Freeman, 2004 |
and compare it to:
All organisms reproduce and sometimes when they reproduce, the children vary. This is an important characteristic of life. If organisms did nor reproduce, life would quickly come to an end. How did the earliest single-celled organisms reproduce? They duplicated their genetic material and then they divided in two. Two daughter cells resulted from this process; they were identical to each other and to the parent cell. But sometimes as the genes duplicated, they changed or mutated. These errors are not very common but they provide the basic material for life to evolve. So when the genetic material duplicates, they reproduce and they make errors. As a result, there is a change in what the genes are composed of. When these processes combine, life evolve. |
The first text is more academic. The second text is longer. It has shorter sentences. It asks question and answers them. All these features are typical of spoken language.
Compare these sentences:
- Organisms reproduce. This is a major characteristic of life.
- Reproduction is a major characteristic of life.
In general they mean the same, but sentence 2 is expressed more concisely. It uses the word 'reproduction', whereas sentence 1 uses the word 'reproduce'. Here the word 'reproduce' is a verb. It would change to 'reproduces' if 'organisms' changed to 'an organism'. 'Reproduction' is a noun made from the verb 'reproduce'; we call this process nominalisation.
Exercise
Complete the table below by finding other nominalisations in the first text above, based on the verbs in the second text.
Verb | Nominalisation |
reproduce | reproduction |
vary | |
duplicate | |
divide | |
mutate | |
combine |
Here are some more verbs that are commonly nominalised. Add more to the table from your own reading.
Verb | Nominalisation |
reproduce | reproduction |
adapt | adaptation |
contract | contraction |
expand | expansion |
react | reaction |
rotate | rotation |
However, not all nominalised words end in 'tion' . Examples are:
- The discovery of this general pattern generated the intermediate disturbance hypothesis.
- It serves as a template for the synthesis of proteins.
- The increase occurs because the number of individuals an area can support increases with productivity, and with larger population sizes, species extinction rates are lower. But why should species richness decrease when productivity is still higher?
- This rise in body temperature inhibits the growth of the invading pathogen. Cytokines may also attract phagocytic cells to the site of injury and initiate a specific response to the pathogen.
Others are: -ity ability, similarity, complexity; -ness blindness, darkness, preparedness; -ment development, encouragement; -ship friendship; -age mileage; -ery robbery, bribery; -al arrival; -ance assistance, resemblance.
There are also other ways to nominalise:
- Some verbs are also used as nouns: plan, increase, influence, survey.
- Some involve a slight change: sell → sale, choose → choice.
- You can use the '-ing' form of the verb: selling, developing.
Furthermore, you can make nominalisations from adjectives by adding -ness, -ism, or -ity. Add more to the table from your own reading.
Adjective | Nominalisation |
appropriate | appropriateness |
active | activism |
complex | complexity |
desirable | desirability |
sceptical | scepticism |
willing | willingness |
Exercise
Try this or this.
Nominalisations used in phrases with 'of'.
Nominalisations often function as the head of a nominal group. Often associated with nominalisation is the occurrence of prepositional phrases, introduced by of:
judgment of those
treatment of children
development of new aircraft
Text Complexity
The Common Core State Standards, as well as many specific state standards, define Text Complexity as a metric that determines how challenging a material is for a child at their specific grade level. Three factors are used to determine the complexity of the text: qualitative measures, quantitative measures, and considerations relating to the reader and task, all of which have to be rated on the basis of grade-level appropriateness.
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Complexity Of Text Complexity Of Thoughtthoughtfull English Version
More About Text Complexity
Text Complexity Measures
Qualitative measures examine text attributes that can only be evaluated by the person who is reading the book or passage. The reader is required to consider such factors as:
Levels of meaning:
- Is the purpose explicitly stated, or is it vague?
- Does it have a single level of meaning vs. multiple purposes?
Clarity and conventions of language:
- Is the language clear, or is it vague and purposefully misleading?
- Is the language contemporary and familiar, or is it unfamiliar and archaic?
- Is the text conversational or academic?
- Is there wide use of figurative language, idiomatic expressions, etc.?
- Is the text cohesive, or does it lack cohesion?
Knowledge demands:
- Is it a single-themed text and relatively simple as opposed to multiple-themed and complex?
- Does the text deal with common everyday experiences, or does it present experiences that are likely, vastly different from those of the reader?
- Is the text presented from single or multiple perspectives? Are there frequent changes in the setting? How many, if any, references to other texts does the text contain?
Structure:
- How is the text organized: chronologically or in another logical fashion?
- Is the text randomly arranged with complex and loosely connected content?
- Do the structure and organization make sense?
- Are sections and features clearly labeled?
- Is the text free of unnecessary distractions?
Visual device complexity:
- Are graphical devices relatively simple, or are they complex?
- Are the graphics 'for show' or to help the student understand the material being presented?
Quantitative measures are what publishers traditionally relied upon to determine the difficulty of a text. There are dozens of formulas used to figure text difficulty. Many of these formulas consider only two factors: They look at sentence length and the number of difficult or unfamiliar words, or they look at sentence length and syllable count. Needless to say, these factors are fairly limiting when it comes to determining the complexity of a text.
Considerations relating to the reader and tasks is the vital 3rd component. Each reader brings different skills, background, and motivation to the act of reading. For example, a student who is interested in the topic being read is likely to bring more background knowledge to the reading task and want to learn more.
The importance of the assignment itself can also influence the reading activity. Skimming a book or article for a key piece of information or reading leisurely places less demand on the reading task than if a student is preparing for an exam, assembling a piece of equipment, or reading for long-term retention.
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