mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Trends, Limitations and Open Challenges in Automatic Readability Assessment Research

arXiv 2105.00973 ↗First posted 3 May 2021cs.CLcited by 28

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Abstract (arXiv)

Readability assessment is the task of evaluating the reading difficulty of a given piece of text. Although research on computational approaches to readability assessment is now two decades old, there is not much work on synthesizing this research. This article is a brief survey of contemporary research on developing computational models for readability assessment. We identify the common approaches, discuss their shortcomings, and identify some challenges for the future. Where possible, we also connect computational research with insights from related work in other disciplines such as education and psychology.

Key facts. Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 9 of its 105 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 May 2021.

Builds on

9 of 105 references.

References · 9

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  2. 2019Text Readability Assessment for Second Language Learnerscited by 54
  3. 2019Supervised and Unsupervised Neural Approaches to Text Readabilitycited by 45
  4. 2020Linguistic Features for Readability Assessmentcited by 35
  5. 2019Controlling Text Complexity in Neural Machine Translationcited by 32
  6. 2021ReadNet: A Hierarchical Transformer Framework for Web Article Readability Analysiscited by 16
  7. 2017Language Modeling by Clustering with Word Embeddings for Text Readability Assessmentcited by 7
  8. 2019Text as Environment: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Text Readability Assessment Modelcited by 7
  9. 2016A Readable Read: Automatic Assessment of Language Learning Materials based on Linguistic Complexitycited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 3; 2022: 2; 2023: 9; 2024: 6; 2025: 5; 2026: 3.

28 papers.

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  1. 2021Pushing on Text Readability Assessment: A Transformer Meets Handcrafted Linguistic Featurescited by 36
  2. 2023Generating Summaries with Controllable Readability Levelscited by 24
  3. 2021BERT Embeddings for Automatic Readability Assessmentcited by 19
  4. 2023ReadMe++: Benchmarking Multilingual Language Models for Multi-Domain Readability Assessmentcited by 19
  5. 2023LFTK: Handcrafted Features in Computational Linguisticscited by 19
  6. 2022A Baseline Readability Model for Cebuanocited by 10
  7. 2024ReadCtrl: Personalizing text generation with readability-controlled instruction learningcited by 10
  8. 2024Measuring and Modifying the Readability of English Texts with GPT-4cited by 10
  9. 2023Prompt-based Learning for Text Readability Assessmentcited by 8
  10. 2025A Large and Balanced Corpus for Fine-grained Arabic Readability Assessmentcited by 8
  11. 2022Automatic Readability Assessment of German Sentences with Transformer Ensemblescited by 7
  12. 2024An Open Multilingual System for Scoring Readability of Wikipediacited by 7
16 more
  1. 2024LLMs in Education: Novel Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunitiescited by 7
  2. 2025Opportunities and Challenges of LLMs in Education: An NLP Perspectivecited by 6
  3. 2021Under the Microscope: Interpreting Readability Assessment Models for Filipinocited by 3
  4. 2023BasahaCorpus: An Expanded Linguistic Resource for Readability Assessment in Central Philippine Languagescited by 2
  5. 2024Strategies for Arabic Readability Modelingcited by 2
  6. 2023Easy-to-Read in Germany: A Survey on its Current State and Available Resourcescited by 1
  7. 2024FPT: Feature Prompt Tuning for Few-shot Readability Assessmentcited by 1
  8. 2025Eye Tracking Based Cognitive Evaluation of Automatic Readability Assessment Methodscited by 1
  9. 2023Optimizing Readability Using Genetic Algorithmscited by 0
  10. 2023Exploring Linguistic Features for Turkish Text Readabilitycited by 0
  11. 2023Cross-corpus Readability Compatibility Assessment for English Textscited by 0
  12. 2025Readability Measures and Automatic Text Simplification: In the Search of a Constructcited by 0
  13. 2025Hierarchical Ranking Neural Network for Long Document Readability Assessmentcited by 0
  14. 2026ComplexityMT: Benchmarking the Interaction Between Text Complexity and Machine Translationcited by 0
  15. 2026Flesch-Kincaid Readability Depends Only on the Topic Distribution in Long Texts under Topic Modelscited by 0
  16. 2026Analyzing Traditional and Neural Approaches to Multilingual Readability Assessmentcited by 0