What makes sentences hard for learners?
- You can compare the reading difficulty of texts on the basis of word and sentence length.
- Longer sentences are usually more complex than shorter sentences.
- Teachers and students can pinpoint challenges within sentences and understand them better by breaking up and joining sentences, and by analysing the groups of words in sentences and the relationships between them.
As academic studies become more advanced, the language usually becomes more complex. The increased complexity includes the following changes:
- The words are longer and more abstract. (See the inquiry How many words should my students know? .)
- The sentences are longer.
- The sentences are more complex in structure.
- The sentences contain a larger number of basic ideas or propositions.
Other factors that can also make texts hard to read include:
- the unfamiliarity of the content or topic
- complexity in the way the text is structured as a whole
- the amount of supporting material
- the layout and size of the print.
