SEOUL, KOREA — E-Future (www.e-future.co.kr), a Korean company that develops English education content, announced on the 19th that the company has completed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with MetaMetrics (www.lexile.com), a U.S. company that has developed the globally recognized ‘Lexile measure’ for assessing reading ability. The MOU agreement allows the Lexile Measure to be applied to English education content developed by E-Future.
The Lexile Measure is a scientifically developed numeric assessment of reading ability, designed to help English-language readers select English texts corresponding to their reading level. Currently, more than 30 million students across all 50 states in the United States receive Lexile Measures. Regarded as an authoritative measure of an individual’s English reading ability and the difficulty of an English text, students in over 165 countries receive Lexile measures from English-language reading assessments.
In Korea, readers can receive reports of their Lexile Measures through exams such as the; TOEFL Junior test (www.TOEFLjunior.or.kr), the TOEFL iBT Test, the E-LQ English Reading Comprehension Assessment, and the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) program.
The Lexile scale can range from below 200L to above 1600L according to the level of difficulty. A Lexile Measure of around 565L~1000L corresponds to the reading level of U.S. students in grades 5 through 6 and 855L~1165L corresponds to the reading level of 9th graders in the U.S.
The MOU completed with MetaMetrics will enable E-Future to use MetaMetrics’ Lexile Analyzer software to evaluate and assign the Lexile Measure of the content developed by E-Future, which will be supplied to education companies or used for consulting programs.
Established in 2000, E-Future has published a best-selling English textbook entitled ‘Smart Phonics’ for tutoring instructors to help elementary students learn English with ease. This textbook is one of E-Future’s leading products and has achieved a high market share.
CEO Gyeong-Ho Hwang of E-Future said, “By using the Lexile Measure to develop and distribute English-language content calibrated to individual reading ability, we anticipate that we will be able to effectively improve English reading abilities.” He added that “The use of the Lexile Measure will allow E-Future to provide exclusively differentiated services.”
President Malbert Smith of MetaMetrics said, “I am very proud that MetaMetrics has formed this partnership with E-Future. This agreement makes it possible for Korea’s students to select and study English education content that are most suitable for their level.” and stated that he was “Confident that the Lexile Measure will provide effective help for selecting content corresponding to the level of each student.”
