Introducing OGTE: The Online Graded Text Editor

(www.EFLTechnologies.com/OGTE/)

Friday, March 15, 2013 from 10:00 AM to 10:45 AM (Diamond Room)

Dr. Charles Browne, CEO EFL Technologies IncProfessor of TESOL & Applied LinguisticsDirector, EFL Teacher Education ProgramMeiji Gakuin University, Tokyo Japancharlie@charlie-browne.com

Who are we?

• Committed Language Teaching professionals

• Based In Japan• Over 70 combined years of teaching

experience • Vast experience in ELT publishing and

online language learning software development

• Advisors to governments and Boards of Education

What is OGTE?

• A free text analysis tool for the EFL community• Part of a large and growing free website that

promotes extensive reading & vocabulary learning

• Allows users to see how difficult certain texts• Allows users to edit texts to pre-set difficulty

levels on the fly• Currently has 16 levels of text difficulty

A free resource for Extensive readingwww.er-central.com

Why do we need an OGTE?

COMPREHNSIBLE INPUT a core and crucial element to second

language development…

Problem:

Reading and listening materials (i.e. INPUT) are

usually far too difficult for learners…

When reading a text, students of course will not know many words…

What percentage of words do you think must be known for them to be able to read easily?

50% ?75% ?85% ?95% ?100% ?

THE HOBBIT by J.R.R. TOLKIEN

Chapter I: An Unexpected Party

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel; a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with paneled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats, the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill, The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it, and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit; bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries, lots of these , wardrobes, he had whole rooms devoted to clothes, kitchens, dining rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left hand side going in, for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

75% Coverage 1000 high frequency words

Forestry

If * planting rates are * with planting * * in each * and the forests * at the earliest opportunity, the * wood supplies could further increase to about 36 million * meters * in the * 2001-2015. The additional * wood supply should greatly * * * , even if much is used for * production.

[ 15 missing words ]

Forestry

If * planting rates are maintained with planting targets satisfied in each * and the forests milled at the earliest opportunity, the * wood supplies could further increase to about 36 million * meters * in the period 2001-2015. The additional _ * _ wood supply should greatly exceed __*_ __*__ , even if much is used for ___* _ production.

[ 9 missing words ]

85% Coverage 2000 high frequency words

95% Coverage5000 high frequency words

Forestry

If current planting rates are maintained with planting targets satisfied in each annually and the forests milled at the earliest opportunity, the available wood supplies could further increase to about 36 million __ * ___ meters annually in the period 2001-2015. The additional available wood supply should greatly exceed domestic requirements, even if much is used for energy production.

[ 1 missing word ]

Vocabulary Thresholds:

• Below 80%, reading comprehension is almost impossible (Hu & Nation, 2001)

• 95% coverage is the point at which learners can read without the help of dictionaries (Laufer, 1989)

How to Grade Your Own Reading Texts…

Solution 1: use a text analysis toolhttp://www.lextutor.ca/vp/

Problem: Only provides a rough analysis…

How to Grade Your Own Reading Texts…

Solution 2: use a dedicated graded-text editing

tool