Determining reading levels of electronic books

• US 8,744,855 B1
• Filed: 08/09/2010
• Issued: 06/03/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/09/2010
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Rausch, Daniel B.
• Primary Examiner(s): COLUCCI, MICHAEL C
• Application Number:
  US12/853,076
• Time in Patent Office: 1,394 Days
• Field of Search: 704/9, 717/100, 434/178
• US Class Current: 704/270
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/237 Lexical tools
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 17/00 Teaching reading teaching lip-reading G09B21/00
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/06 Foreign languages with audible presentation of material to be studied G09B5/04

Abstract

Architectures and techniques are described to determine a reading level of an electronic book. In particular, words, phrases, clauses, and parts of speech of an electronic book may be tagged and used to determine the reading level of the electronic book. In some cases, the reading level of the electronic book is based on a level of complexity of sentences of the electronic book and a level of complexity of words of the electronic book.

Claims

1. A computing system comprising:

one or more processors; and

memory accessible by the one or more processors, the memory storing;

a reading level determination system including;

a vocabulary tagging module executable by the one or more processors to tag words within a document;

a sentence structure tagging module to tag phrases within the document, clauses within the document, parts of speech within the document, or a combination thereof; and

a reading level determination module to determine a reading level of the document based at least in part on the words, the phrases, the clauses, the parts of speech, or a combination thereof, and based at least in part on reading levels of documents within a corpus.

2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the vocabulary tagging module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine a reading level of a particular word within the document based at least in part on the reading levels of the documents within the corpus that include the particular word, the reading level of the particular word indicating a version of an electronic book that includes the particular word and is associated with the reading level.

3. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the vocabulary tagging module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine a level of complexity of a particular word within the document based at least in part on a length of the word, phonemes of the word, or a combination thereof.

4. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the vocabulary tagging module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine a number of words within the document having a particular level of complexity.

5. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the sentence structure tagging module is further executable by the one or more processors to implement a Hidden Markov model to tag the phrases, the parts of speech, the clauses, or a combination thereof.

6. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the sentence structure tagging module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine a reading level of the phrases, the parts of speech, the clauses, or a combination thereof, the reading level indicating a version of an electronic book that includes the phrases, the parts of speech, the clauses, or a combination thereof, and is associated with the reading level.

7. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the sentence structure tagging module is further executable by the one or more processors to provide a count of a number of particular parts of speech within the document, a count of a number of particular phrases within the document, a count of a number of particular clauses within the document, or a combination thereof.

8. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the reading level determination module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine the reading level of the document based at least in part on matches between the words within the document and words of the documents within the corpus, the documents within the corpus having predetermined reading levels.

9. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the reading level determination module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine the reading level of the document based at least in part on matches between at least one of the phrases, the clauses, and the parts of speech within the document, and corresponding phrases, clauses, and parts of speech of the documents within the corpus.

10. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the reading level determination module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine the reading level of the document based at least in part on a number of occurrences of the phrases, the clauses, or the parts of speech in relation to corresponding occurrences of the phrases, the clauses, or the parts of speech within the documents of the corpus.

11. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the reading level determination module is further executable by the one or more processors to determine the reading level of the document based at least in part on a length of sentences within the document.

12. A computer-readable storage media storing computer-readable instructions that, when executed, instruct a processor to perform operations comprising:

determining a reading level of a first version of an electronic book based at least in part on reading levels of documents within a corpus; and

producing mapping content for the electronic book to produce a second version of the electronic book having a reading level that is different than the reading level of the first version of the electronic book, the mapping content comprising;

one or more replacements words to substitute for one or more words within the first version of the electronic book;

one or more words to add to or remove from sentences of the first version of the electronic book;

or

one or more phrases to add to or remove from the sentences of the first version of the electronic book.

13. The computer-readable storage media of claim 12, wherein the mapping content comprises the one or more replacement words, and wherein the one or more replacement words comprise synonyms for respective words within the first version of the electronic book.

14. The computer-readable storage media of claim 13, wherein the one or more replacement words are determined by examining thesauruses, dictionaries, or lexicons.

15. The computer-readable storage media of claim 13, wherein the one or more replacement words are associated with versions of the electronic book that are different from the first version of the electronic book.

16. The computer-readable storage media of claim 12, wherein the mapping content comprises the one or more words to add to the sentences of the first version of the electronic book, and wherein the one or more words include adverbs, adjectives, or a combination thereof.

17. The computer-readable storage media of claim 12, wherein the mapping content comprises the one or more phrases to add to the sentences of the first version of the electronic book, and wherein the one or more phrases include prepositional phrases, adverb phrases, adjective phrases, noun phrases, verb phrases, idioms, or a combination thereof.

18. The computer-readable storage media of claim 12, wherein the mapping content comprises the one or more replacement words, the one or more words to remove from the sentences of the electronic book, the one or more phrases to remove from the sentences of the electronic book, or a combination thereof, and wherein the reading level of the second version of the electronic book is less than the reading level of the first version of the electronic book.

19. The computer-readable storage media of claim 12, wherein the mapping content comprises the one or more replacement words, the one or more words to add to the sentences of the electronic book, the one or more phrases to add to the sentences of the electronic book, or a combination thereof, and wherein the reading level of the second version of the electronic book is greater than the reading level of the first version of the electronic book.

20. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

under control of one or more computing systems configured with specific executable instructions,

identifying a word of an electronic book;

assigning a level of complexity to the word based on a length of the word, phonemes of the word, or a combination thereof;

identifying a synonym of the word with a different level of complexity than the level of complexity of the word;

assigning a first reading level to the word based on documents of a corpus that include the word, the first reading level indicating a first version of the electronic book that includes the word and is associated with a particular reading level; and

assigning a second reading level to the synonym based on the documents of the corpus that include the synonym, the second reading level indicating a second version of the electronic book that includes the synonym and is associated with a different reading level.

21. The computer-implemented method of claim 20, further comprising examining thesauruses, dictionaries, lexicons, or a combination thereof, to identify the synonym.

22. The computer-implemented method of claim 21, further comprising compiling a thesaurus that maps the word to the synonym and that stores respective readings levels in association with the word and the synonym.

23. The computer-implemented method of claim 22, wherein the thesaurus is included in mapping content of the electronic book, the mapping content for converting the electronic book from the particular reading level to the different reading level.

24. The computer-implemented method of claim 23, further comprising converting the electronic book from the particular reading level to the different reading level, the converting including replacing the word of the electronic book with the synonym.

25. The computer-implemented method of claim 23, wherein the different reading level comprises a higher reading level or a lower reading level than the particular reading level.