Revealing Factors Affecting Learners’ Sense of “Difficulty” in Extensive Reading Through Reader Corpora

In Extensive Reading (ER) programs in university English curricula, two kinds of readers are often used: Graded Readers (GRs), specifically designed for learners of English as a foreign language, and Youth Readers (YRs), written for native speaker children. However, students often find YRs more difficult even when they are categorized as being at the same level as GRs. To find out the differences between GRs and YRs, reader corpora were compiled and compared. As a result, the following characteristics of YRs were observed: (1) a lower percentage of the basic 1000-word-level vocabulary, showing a steady increase of vocabulary level as the reader levels go up, (2) a higher percentage of passive sentences and complicated sentence structures, (3) some basic words, such as even, if, been and around, having much higher frequencies and usage varieties, and (4) many more descriptive expressions. These characteristics of YRs may be considered as factors that affect learners’ comprehension.