The Assessment of Readability by Noun Frequency Counts
Warwick B. Elley · Reading Research Quarterly · 1969
DESCRIBES AND illustrates a new method of assessing the readability of children's reading material using a word frequency count to rate the nouns in a given passage. The average frequency level of the nouns was used to provide a highly valid estimate of reading difficulty. Five independent validity studies are reported comparing the proposed method with conventional techniques for assessing readability. The noun frequency approach proved consistently superior in predicting a criterion of reading difficulty based on the pooled estimates of teachers' and pupils' ratings. Suggestions were made for applying the method in countries which have appropriate word frequency counts.