TESOL: Handouts

The PDF documents below are the handouts provided for course-specific TESOL library sessions.

STUDENTS: these are tailored library instructions to help you with your assignments.
LIBRARIANS: these serve as ready-made lesson for conducting any TESOL requests for instruction

DETERMINING THE READING LEVEL OF BOOKS

In the Educational world (K-12/Adult school systems) the reading level of books is classified by either a Letter system or a Number system.  Further explanation of this is at these websites: website1, website2, website3, website4, website5.

Letter System
Some state education departments, school districts, and publishers assign a letter to represent the reading difficulty of books.  There are several lettering systems that do this.  You can consult the systems below:

• Fountas and Pinnell (access to the book list requires subscription; rating criteria is here)
• Reading A-Z (rating criteria is here)
• Scholastic Books (use filter on the left; a level chart is here; rating criteria is here)

Number System
Other state education departments, school districts, and publishers assign a number to represent the reading difficulty of books.  There are a couple numbering systems that do this.  You can consult the systems below:

• Lexile Numbers (use the "tools" tab at the top to look up books, or analyze text; rating criteria is here).
• Direct Reading Assessment (DRA) 

In 2022, the British Council announced the publication of the Knowledge-based Vocabulary lists (KVL).  This pioneering effort, nearly 6 years in the making, led by noted Linguist Norbert Schmitt (Emeritus, University of Nottingham, UK), identifies the best-known 5,000 words of English by speakers of other languages (e.g., Chinese, Spanish, German).   See the KVL here: https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/aptis/aptis-expertise/knowledge-based-vocabulary-lists-kvl