Overview
The Intertextuality evaluator assesses how much a text’s meaning depends on relational knowledge – i.e. what a text assumes students have already encountered (from another text, a cultural reference, genre conventions, etc.) and then builds on to create meaning. Intertextuality is one of the least visible qualitative dimensions of text complexity – unlike Vocabulary or Sentence Structure, there is no word to flag or clause to count.Intertextuality is distinct from Subject Matter Knowledge:
- Subject Matter Knowledge – Content that a text assumes (facts, concepts, domain knowledge)
- Intertextuality - Relational knowledge that a text assumes (prior encounters with texts, references and conventions)
At a glance
The evaluator was built and validated using the model and temperature below (other configurations will produce different results and may have lower accuracy):
Getting started
Follow the Quickstart to start using this evaluator:Inputs
Output
Interpreting results
High or low complexity scores are not inherently good or bad. A higher complexity score simply indicates a text whose meaning depends more substantially on prior cultural or textual encounters.Example: A “Very complex” or “Exceedingly complex” text may be ideal if
the instructional goal is analyzing how authors use allusion and convention to
build arguments. However, that same text may not be a good fit if the
instructional goal is content comprehension.