The Relation Between the Difficulty of Italian Texts and Language Level in the Reading Skill

Abstract

This study aims to show the readability limits of the B and C language level Italian texts, which can be used for the reading assessment and the characteristics they depend on. For this purpose, 184 Italian texts used in the certification exams of the KPG system were analysed in an attempt to reveal the main traits (quantitative, lexical and syntactic) of the texts defining their readability and their correlation with the language level for which they are intended. The correlation analysis indicated that cognitive characteristics are more important than quantitative characteristics, while a high correlation of lexical variables with B1 and B2 levels and syntactic variables with C1 and C2 levels emerged.