Automated video difficulty assessment

Abstract

Automated assessment of text difficulty has been recognized as one method for assisting language teachers, textbook publishers, curriculum specialists, test developers, and researchers to make more informed decisions when selecting texts for use in instruction and assessment. While there is a substantial body of work on written and spoken texts, research on videotext difficulty is very scarce. Through a series of studies, the aim of this research program was twofold: to investigate what makes a videotext difficult for language learners and to develop automated measures to help predict difficulty in videotexts. Constructed to be used in this thesis, the Second Language Video Complexity (SLVC)..