Prior Knowledge of Text Content and Values of Text Characteristics

Linguistic characteristics of texts have been used in the readability formula to predict the comprehension level of texts. The question arises as to whether the characteristics are related to the complexity of text content. To solve the problem, 30 text passages from popular scientific books in Estonian were taken as a basis. Questions were composed on the texts’ content, and 9th and 10th grade students answered the questions before reading the texts. The percentage of correct answers correlated with four groups of text characteristics: word length, sentence length, noun ness level, and word familiarity level. The authors of texts write differently on familiar and unfamiliar topics. A formula for the familiarity of text content was composed. The formula is similar to the readability formula. All the predictor variables in the readability formulae are related to the complexity of text content.