Fundamentals of materials (text readability evaluation)

Abstract

Fundamentals of materials represent a core subject at engineering universities dealing with various construction materials. The study of the discipline and the acquiring of knowledge demand a properly designed manual. Apart from content, manual authors should pay attention to the way they compose the text. Different tools are applied to assess the quality of a manual (its difficulty, complexity, readability). Readability formulae play a significant role in the sphere. Dealing with quantitative parameters of a text (the length of sentences, the length of words and others), readability formulae are able to predict the level of text readability and relate the text to a potential reader in respect to their age and academic level. Flesch-Kincaid Readability Level formula is chosen to analyze two manuals: one comes in the English language, the other – in Russian. The idea is to check how readable the texts of both manuals are. 17 English and 17 Russian texts are taken for the analysis. Pearson correlation is applied to illustrate whether the manuals demonstrate decrease or increase of the readability level of texts throughout the books.