Coh-Metrix is a computational tool that produces indices of the

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...

representations of a text. Developed by

Arthur C. Graesser Arthur C. Graesser (born 1950) is a professor of psychology and intelligent systems at the University of Memphis and is an honorary research fellow in education at the University of Oxford. He has served as the editor of the Journal of Education ...

and Danielle S. McNamara, Coh-Metrix analyzes texts on many different features.

Measurements

Coh-Metrix can be used in many different ways to investigate the cohesion of the explicit text and the coherence of the

mental representation A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that ma ...

of the text. "Our definition of cohesion consists of characteristics of the explicit text that play some role in helping the reader mentally connect ideas in the text" (Graesser, McNamara, & Louwerse, 2003). The definition of coherence is the subject of much debate. Theoretically, the coherence of a text is defined by the interaction between linguistic representations and knowledge representations. While coherence can be defined as characteristics of the text (i.e., aspects of cohesion) that are likely to contribute to the coherence of the mental representation, Coh-Metrix measurements provide indices of these cohesion characteristics. According to an empirical study, the Coh-Metrix L2 Reading Index performs significantly better than traditional

readability Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects that a ...

formulas.

References

External links

An exposition of the report
Memphis.edu. Includes many detailed concepts under "discourse coherence" and "linguistic cohesion". Reading (process) Computational linguistics Applied linguistics Second language writing {{comp-ling-stub acquisition-stub

Measurements

See also

References

External links