What is a Lexile?
A Lexile is a unit that measures the amount of challenge presented by a passage of text. If we know the Lexile measure of a book and we know the Lexile measure of a child, we can tell how the book matches the child's reading ability-whether it's too easy, too difficult or just right.
The Lexile Framework® determines the difficulty of text by way of sophisticated software. The software uses a mathematical equation that looks at two factors:
- The difficulty of the vocabulary (semantic difficulty)
- The complexity of the sentences (syntactic complexity) throughout the entire book.
This information can be used to match students with books at their Lexile Level and in their interest areas. Reading at this 'target' level offers sufficient challenge without frustration. |
