For this assignment, you are to write a program that computes the Flesch Readability Score for a document. The Flesch Readability Score is computed using a formula developed iin the early 1940s. It measures the average sentence length in words and the average word length in syllables. Put these two numbers into a formula and get a number between 0 and 100 that shows you the difficulty of a piece of writing.
Here is the algorithm according to the original author, Rudolf Flesch, along with simplifications you should make for this project:
Flesch has provided some examples of readability score calculations from various publications:
Comics | 92 |
Seventeen | 67 |
Time Magazine | 52 |
standard auto insurance policy | 10 |
Internal Revenue Code | -6 |
The Flesch Readability Score can be translated into educational levels using this table:
91-100 | 5th grade |
81-90 | 6th grade |
71-80 | 7th grade |
61-70 | 8th and 9th grade |
51-60 | 10th to 12th grade |
31-50 | college student |
0-30 | college graduate |
Given a source file, your program should compute the Flesch Readability Score. It must also provide detailed statistics through accessor methods. Here is the test program:
public class TestFlesch { public static void main (String[] args) { Flesch ms = new Flesch("Gettysburg.txt"); System.out.println( "Source text file: " + ms.getFilename() ) ; System.out.println( "Readability score: " + ms.getLegibilityIndex() ) ; System.out.println( "Educational level: " + ms.getEducationalLevel() ); System.out.println( "Syllables: " + ms.getNumSyllables() ); System.out.println( "Words: " + ms.getNumWords() ); System.out.println( "Sentences: " + ms.getNumSentences() ); } }
Here is the format of the output using the Gettysburg Address:
Source text file: Gettysburg.txt Readability score: 61.0 Educational level: 8th and 9th grade Syllables: 374 Words: 265 Sentences: 10
Several files are provided for testing:
test-6th-grader.txt suitable for a sixth grader, legibility index 87.
test-college-grad.txt suitable for a college graduate, legibility index 28.
Gettysburg.txt Gettysburg Address.
You may want to test your code with other text files before submitting you code, Flesch.java for grading. I will test it with very easy and very difficult passages and will expect reasonable results.
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