P_Lex : a simple and effective way of describing the lexical characteristics of short L2 texts

This paper describes an alternative approach to assessing the lexical complexity of short texts produced by second language learners of English. This methodology bears a passing resemblance to the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) suggested by Laufer and Nation (1995), but the approach it takes is mathematically more sophisticated, and the data it produces is easier to work with. We argue that P_Lex produces data which is broadly comparable with the data produced by LFP. However, P_Lex works much better with shorter texts than LFP does, and this makes it a better tool for evaluating texts produced by low-level learners.15 page(s