Introducing OGTE: The Online Graded Text Editor Friday, March 15, 2013 from 10:00 AM to 10:45 AM (Diamond Room) Dr. Charles Browne, CEO EFL Technologies IncDr. Rob Waring, Professor of TESOL & Applied LinguisticsProfessor of Applied Linguistics Director, EFL Teacher Education ProgramExtensive Reading Foundation Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo JapanNotre Dame Seishin University, Japan

Who are we? Committed language teaching professionals Based in Japan Over 70 combined years of teaching experience Vast experience in ELT publishing and online language learning software development Advisors to governments and Boards of Education

What is OGTE? A free text analysis tool for the EFL community Part of a large and growing free website that promotes extensive reading & vocabulary learning Allows users to see how difficult certain texts Allows users to edit texts to pre-set difficulty levels on the fly Currently has 16 levels of text difficulty

A free resource for Extensive reading

Why do we need an OGTE? COMPREHNSIBLE INPUT a core and crucial element to second language development…

Problem: Reading and listening materials (i.e. INPUT) are usually far too difficult for learners…

When reading a text, students of course will not know many words… What percentage of words do you think must be known for them to be able to read easily? 50% ? 75% ? 85% ? 95% ? 100% ? THE HOBBIT by J.R.R. TOLKIEN Chapter I: An Unexpected Party In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel; a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with paneled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats, the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill, The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it, and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit; bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries, lots of these, wardrobes, he had whole rooms devoted to clothes, kitchens, dining rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left hand side going in, for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

75% Coverage 1000 high frequency words Forestry If * planting rates are * with planting * * in each * and the forests * at the earliest opportunity, the * wood supplies could further increase to about 36 million * meters * in the * The additional * wood supply should greatly * * *, even if much is used for * production. [ 15 missing words ]

[ 9 missing words ] 85% Coverage 2000 high frequency words

95% Coverage 5000 high frequency words [ 1 missing word ]

Vocabulary Thresholds: Below 80%, reading comprehension is almost impossible (Hu & Nation, 2001) 95% coverage is the point at which learners can read without the help of dictionaries (Laufer, 1989)

How to Grade Your Own Reading Texts… Solution 1: use a text analysis tool

Problem: Only provides a rough analysis…

How to Grade Your Own Reading Texts… Solution 2: use a dedicated graded-text editing tool

What is OGTE? A FREE editing tool for teachers and authors It allows users to analyze the vocabulary in a text by pre-set levels Allows you to write something to a specific level You can add your own wordlists (if you ask nicely)

Black – in level Red out of list Red underline – out of level Green – ignored words Black – in level Red out of list Red underline – out of level Green – ignored words

Users select a wordlist (more will be added later) They select a level within that wordlist The buttons are tabs that show various data analyses

The full wordlist (86,000 TYPES) Words in the selected list (e.g. the General list with 4500 words) Words in the text which are in level e.g Level 7 OUT OF LIST WORDS OUT OF LEVEL WORDS – In the selected list but not in level IN LIST WORDS IN LEVEL WORDS

All data can be exported to your computer

Exported data: Is in Excel format can be manipulated as you wish

OGTE records various statistics: Total running words % in / out of list etc. % words ignored Etc.

Wordlists The current General Service list has 16 levels corresponding to the Extensive Reading Foundations levels. More wordlists to be added soon TOEIC Ministry lists Business list Want to add your list? Ask.

The go-to place for all our Extensive Reading needs