Contribution of linguistic complexity to L2 learners’ perception on Chinese text comprehensibility and reading speed: a comparative judgment approach

Abstract This study delved into how linguistic complexity, gauged through various lexical, syntactic, and discoursal indices, correlates with the perception of text difficulty among learners acquiring Chinese as a second language (L2). This perception of difficulty underwent scrutiny via a comparative judgment task, wherein L2 raters appraised text comprehensibility and reading speed. A corpus of 250 Chinese texts was targeted, with 170 Chinese L2 learners participating as raters. Among these, eighty-five raters adjudicated pairs of texts, discerning the text posing greater comprehension challenge within each duo, while another eighty-five raters determined the text they could read faster within each pair. Stepwise linear regression models, which incorporate a range of linguistic indices, accounted for a substantial proportion of the variance in L2 learners’ judgments of comprehensibility and reading speed, respectively. Insights garnered from this study hold promise in enriching our comprehension of the elements influencing text difficulty in Chinese-L2 learners.