President Malbert Smith III of MetaMetrics, the developer of the English Lexile Measures, to visit Korea

SEOUL--(Korea Newswire)--Dr. Malbert Smith III, the President and Co-founder of the U.S. company MetaMetrics®, Inc. widely known as the developers of the Lexile® Measures for English language reading (www.lexile.com) is scheduled to visit Korea to present a lecture at the 4th “KATE 2012 International Conference” hosted by the Korea Association of Teachers of English (www.kate.or.kr), which will take place over the course of two days on July 6th and 7th at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul.

The theme of this year’s conference is “English Proficiency for All: Narrowing the English Gap,” and Dr. Smith will present his lecture entitled “Re-interpreting the Gap with The Lexile® Framework for Reading” on the first day of the conference (July 6th) from 3:20 PM to 4 PM.

Dr. Smith also participated in last year’s conference as a lecturer and was appreciated for his generosity in sharing his advice on English education in Korea and is anticipated to present a very special message to the participants engaged in the field of English education. Last year, MetaMetrics, who is also the developer of the Lexile Measure, entered into a partnership with Interpark, the internet bookstore company, and the Natmal Corporation, the research institute specializing in Korean and English lexical information processing, to take leadership in introducing the use of the Lexile Measures in Korea. Interpark currently uses the Lexile Measure for labeling English publications sold in the company’s internet bookstore, and the Natmal Corporation has developed and launched the E-LQ service for evaluating English reading abilities with the assistance of MetaMetrics, Inc.

The Lexile Framework for Reading is a scientific approach to measuring reading ability and the text demand of reading materials. The Lexile Framework includes a Lexile measure and the Lexile® scale. A Lexile measure represents both the complexity of a text, such as a book or article, and an individual’s reading ability. Lexile measures are expressed as numeric measures followed by an “L” (for example, 850L), and are placed on the Lexile scale. The Lexile scale is a developmental scale for measuring reader ability and text complexity, ranging from below 200L for beginning readers and beginning-reader materials to above 1700L for advanced readers and materials. Knowing the Lexile measures of a reader and a text helps to predict how the text matches the reader’s ability—whether it may be too easy, too difficult or just right. All Lexile products and services rely on the Lexile measure and Lexile scale to match reader with text.

Currently, the Lexile scale is the leading index and the world’s most widely used measures for assessing English reading levels. In the United States, for example, the popularity of the Lexile Mesures is attested by the fact that it is used by approximately 30 million students across all 50 states each year. Lexile measures are reported from many popular international assessments and reading programs. For a complete list of international assessments and reading programs that report out Lexile measures, visit http://www.lexile.com/about-lexile/How-to-get-lexile-measures/international-assessments/.

Dr. Malbert Smith III stated that “for the majority of Koreans who are learning English as a foreign language, reading in English is the best and quickest path to improving their English skills” and added that “Lexile Measures will contribute significantly to improving English skills by selecting texts with the appropriate level of difficulty to correspond to the English reading skills of students, making it possible to engage in English reading more efficiently.”

Korea Association of Teachers of English: http://www.kate.or.kr
Lexile Measures: http://www.lexile.com

This is a news release distributed by Korea Newswire on behalf of this company.