Assessing writing with the tool for the automatic analysis of lexical sophistication (TAALES)

Tool

Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication (TAALES).

Tool Purpose

To calculate a wide range of classic and newly developed indices of lexical sophistication (e.g., frequency, range, academic register, concreteness and familiarity, psycholinguistic word properties, and semantic network norms).

Key Premise

Lexical sophistication features are strong predictors of writing quality in both first language (L1) and second language (L2) contexts.

Research Connections

Inspired by Coh-Metrix but developed to improve on the limitations of the Coh-Metric tool.

Limitations

Does not examine accuracy of lexical use or words not available in selected databases.

Future Developments

Continue to add lexical databases as they become available.