English as a Second Language (ESL) reading materials for children are important in second language development. It is believed that language cannot be taught in a vacuum context as language functions within a culture. Even though learning a language requires learning about the culture unconsciously, learners' culture should be taken into…

This article examines how English as a foreign language learners might be better matched to reading texts using automatic readability analysis. Specifically, I examine how the lexical decoding component of readability might be validated. In Japan, readability has been mostly determined by publishers or by professional reading organizations who…

This paper reports activities (as part of a university course in language teacher education on teaching reading) in which primary school student teachers (all ESL in-service teacher trainees) explored their own skills of determining textbook readability using an online software tool and a cloze test completed by two hundred and seventy-eight Grade…