Extant Readability Tools Online for Classroom Utilization

Abstract

Online readability tools, largely unknown to language teachers in third-world
countries, have been flooding the internet for years. Their usefulness have been regarded with
varying degrees of approval. In more than a dozen websites, it has been discovered that there
are marked similarities and differences that classroom teachers have to be keen with in making
the right choice of an online readability tool. In general, the availability of particular readability
tools differs from one site to another. In addition, a glaring difference on the type of statistics or
parameters on most sites are observed. Moreover, other sites do not have the needed statistics or
parameters that teachers need the most. Using a case study of the readability of the reading texts
of a mandated textbook, useful readability tools were browsed. The results are a number of tools
to choose from, and tips to benefit from web-based sources.