Introducing OGTE The Online Graded Text Editor www

Introducing OGTE: The Online Graded Text Editor www. ER-Central. com/OGTE Friday, March 15, 2013 from 10: 00 AM to 10: 45 AM (Diamond Room) Dr. Charles Browne, CEO EFL Technologies Inc Dr. Rob Waring, Professor of TESOL & Applied Linguistics Professor of Applied Linguistics Director, EFL Teacher Education Program Extensive Reading Foundation Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo Japan Notre Dame Seishin University, Japan charlie@charlie-browne. com waring. rob@gmail. com

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 www. er-central. com

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 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, deepset round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

75% Coverage 1000 high frequency words Forestry [ 15 missing words ] 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 * 2001 -2015. The additional * wood supply should greatly * * * , even if much is used for * production.

85% Coverage 2000 high frequency words Forestry [9 missing words ] If * planting rates are maintained with planting targets satisfied in each * and the forests milled at the earliest opportunity, the * wood supplies could further increase to about 36 million * meters * in the period 20012015. The additional _ * _ wood supply should greatly exceed __*__ , even if much is used for ___* _ production.

95% Coverage 5000 high frequency words Forestry [1 missing word ] If current planting rates are maintained with planting targets satisfied in each annually and the forests milled at the earliest opportunity, the available wood supplies could further increase to about 36 million __ * ___ meters annually in the period 2001 -2015. The additional available wood supply should greatly exceed domestic requirements, even if much is used for energy production.

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 http: //www. lextutor. ca/vp/

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) www. er-central. com/ogte

Black – in level Red out of list Red underline – out of level Green – ignored words www. er-central. com/ogte

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 www. er-central. com/ogte

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

www. er-central. com/ogte

www. er-central. com/ogte

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. www. er-central. com/ogte

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. www. er-central. com/ogte

www. ER-Central. com The go-to place for all our Extensive Reading needs