Readability level of Arabic books taught at current first high schools and old junior high schools in Iran based on Fry Equation

Evaluating readability means evaluating the difficulty with which the reader faces in text comprehension. Analyzing readability helps prepare new materials and determine the audience level by evaluating the texts. There are numerous methods to evaluate texts which are generally divided into two types. The first type is based on interviews, questionnaires and tests. The second type evaluates the readability of the text by using formulae and calculations. Among the formulae, one can refer to “Fry Formula” which is the basis of the current study. Assessing Fry’s suggested charts revealed that these charts are not suitable for Arabic language structure. The main reason for this lack of suitability is expressing the last letter of words in Arabic leading to an increase in syllables. However, on the other hand, the easy-to-hard rule of text distribution, which is the basis of Fry Equation, can be used for evaluating Arabic texts. The aim of this study is to investigate the readability of Arabic book of current first high schools in comparison with that of the old junior high schools. Investigating each and every book and also the holistic comparison of secondary school and old junior high school books showed that these books have served well in determining the average of sentences; however, regarding the syllable distribution, these books are not so logical, as it was mentioned in Fry Formula.