Langue(s) & Parole
https://revistes.uab.cat/languesparole/


***Call for Papers – Special Issue: Readability and Textual Complexity***

The journal Langues et Parole invites researchers to submit contributions for its special issue dedicated to readability and textual complexity. This issue aims to explore theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as practical applications, in a crucial area for analyzing reading skills and developing educational tools.


Theme of the Special Issue

The complexity and readability of texts are key research areas in assessing reading skills, particularly in diverse learning contexts. This special issue seeks to gather studies that combine linguistics, language technologies, and applied artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand and evaluate readability and textual complexity. In connection with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2020), submissions may include studies that aim to adapt textual complexity levels for readers with different proficiency levels (Cunningham & Mesmer, 2014).


Topics of Interest

Proposals may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

- Automatic readability assessment: New methods and analysis models, ranging from traditional linguistic measures to modern approaches based on deep learning and large language models, as described, for example, in Lee et al. (2021).

- Studies on lexical and syntactic complexity: Analyses of lexical richness, syntactic structure, and textual cohesion (Dahl, 2007; Collins-Thompson, 2014; Chen & Meurers, 2018), with applications for corpora annotated by complexity levels used in educational environments.

- Educational applications of NLP technologies: Methods and tools for Natural Language Processing (NLP) to adapt texts to learners’ specific needs, taking into account multilingual and cultural aspects (OECD, 2013; UNESCO, 2020). Contributions may explore solutions based on complexity lexicons (Blanco Escoda et al., 2024) or online assessment tools (Ribeiro et al., 2024).

- Prediction and evaluation of textual complexity: Development of real-time evaluation techniques, with a focus on user interface and digital accessibility, to meet the specific needs of educators and learners (Chen & Meurers, 2016).


Paper submission

Papers may be written in a Romance language (Spanish, French, or Catalan) or in English, to reflect the multilingual nature of this special edition. Submissions will be evaluated based on scientific rigor, topic relevance, and their contribution to the fields of readability and textual complexity. https://revistes.uab.cat/languesparole/about/submissions


Important Dates

• Initial submission deadline: May 31, 2025
• Notification to authors: July 3, 2025
• Final submission deadline: September 20, 2025
• Expected publication date: Before December 31, 2025

For any questions or further information, please contact the editorial team at https://revistes.uab.cat/languesparole/about/contact.



References

Blanco Escoda, X., Amaro, R., François, T., & Garcia, M. (2023). iRead4Skills - Baselines for complexity lexicons definition. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10069793

Chen, X., & Meurers, D. (2016). CTAP: A web-based tool supporting automatic complexity analysis. Proceedings of CL4LC, 113–119.

Chen, X., & Meurers, D. (2018). Word frequency and readability: Predicting the text-level readability with a lexical-level attribute. Journal of Research in Reading, 41(3), 486–510.

Collins-Thompson, K. (2014). Computational assessment of text readability: A survey of current and future research. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 165(2), 97–135.

Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment – Companion volume. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. https://www.coe.int/lang-cefr

Cunningham, J. W., & Mesmer, H. A. (2014). Quantitative measurement of text difficulty: What’s the use? Elementary School Journal, 115, 255–269.

Dahl, O. (2007). Definitions of complexity. Proceedings of the Colloquium on Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency in Second Language Use, Learning & Teaching, 41–46.

Douglas, Y., & Miller, S. (2016). Syntactic and lexical complexity of reading correlates with complexity of writing in adults. International Journal of Business Administration, 7(4).

Imperial, J. M. (2021). Knowledge-rich BERT embeddings for readability assessment. arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.07935

Lee, B. W., Jang, Y. S., & Lee, J. (2021). Pushing on text readability assessment: A transformer meets handcrafted linguistic features. Proceedings of EMNLP 2021, 10, 669–10,686.

OECD. (2013). Technical report of the survey of adult skills (PIAAC). OECD Publishing.

Ribeiro, E., Mamede, N., & Baptista, J. (2024). Automatic text readability assessment in European Portuguese.Proceedings of PROPOR 2024, 97–107.

UNESCO. (2020). Literacy. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. https://uis.unesco.org/node/3079547

Wilkens, R., Alfter, D., Wang, X., Pintard, A., Tack, A., Yancey, K. P., & François, T. (2022). FABRA: French aggregator-based readability assessment toolkit. Proceedings of ELRA, 1217–1233.