Density and Readability of English Writing Among Arab Learners of English

Abstract

Earlier research on writing problems among Arab learners of English focused on surface-level correctness. Deep-level aspects such as lexical density and text readability have been completely ignored. This study attempts to examine the readability and lexical density of English essays produced by Arab learners of English at a tertiary level. Data were collected from 100 Arab students majoring in engineering at King Faisal University. Electronic forms of the essays were analyzed and compared with essays written by English native speakers using readability and lexical density online formulas. Results show that the readability levels of Arab learners’ written essays were much below the college level with shorter sentence lengths than in most published writings. Lexical density was close to the minimum score of general written texts with more glue words, more sticky sentences, more monosyllabic words, and with less variety in sentence starts. Furthermore, it was found that lexical density and readability correlated positively with perceptions of writing fluency, sophistication, and academic level. This study concludes with some pedagogical practices to increase the proficiency levels of academic writing at the college level. Further studies that compare students with different first language backgrounds at different proficiency levels and examine the extent to which grammatical errors, spelling, and punctuation errors affect text readability and lexical density at college level are highly recommended.