Complejidad gramatical y niveles de dificultad en lecturas de ELE adaptadas y originales

Abstract

Spanish L2 readings are classified by editors into different difficulty levels. However, very few criteria if any are mentioned for the classification. When some criterion is mentioned, it is a measure of vocabulary diversity, with no reference to morphosyntactic complex- ity. The present study seeks to answer two main questions: a) is there a relation between certain indexes of morphosyntactic complexity and the readings levels of difficulty?, and b) are texts created as L2 readings and texts adapted from originally L1 readings different with respect to such indexes of morphosyntactic complexity? A sample of 61 fragments belonging to the two different types of texts are classified into 3 different difficulty lev- els (basic, intermediate and advanced) and are analyzed for primary syntactic maturity indexes and verbal diversity. Results show that only for the texts originally written as L2 readings is the difference between the levels significant. In addition, the intermediate and advanced levels are much less different among them than with respect to the basic level. Keywords : Syntactic complexity, Spanish L2 readings, reading difficulty, L2 reading, for- eign language acquisition, L2 Spanish.