Retrieval of Reading Materials for Vocabulary and Reading Practice

Finding appropriate, authentic reading materials is a challenge for language instructors. The Web is a vast resource of texts, but most pages are not suitable for reading practice, and commercial search engines are not well suited to finding texts that satisfy pedagogical constraints such as reading level, length, text quality, and presence of target vocabulary. We present a system that uses various language technologies to facilitate the retrieval and presentation of authentic reading materials gathered from the Web. It is currently deployed in two English as a Second Language courses at the University of Pittsburgh.