The Language Difficulty of the Original Version and the Rewritten Version of The Time Machine: A Corpus-based Study

Abstract

This study examines the language difficulty of the original version and rewritten version of The Time Machine from the perspective of lexical complexity, syntactic complexity, and semantic complexity. We aim to answer the following two research questions: (1) Is there a significant difference between the language difficulty of the original version and rewritten version of The Time Machine? If yes, in what ways? (2) Is the rewritten version well-targeted at its intended readers? The data consisted of three corpora, the original version of The Time Machine, the rewritten version, and passages from English subjects in the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) of China. The results demonstrate a significant difference between the original and rewritten versions on most measures of language difficulty, but in many respects, the rewritten version still leaves much to work on before becoming suitable reading material for its target readers. With such analysis carried out, we seek to offer some pedagogical implications to better facilitate English learning in China.