Analysis of the “Gone with the Wind” and its Simplified Version in terms of Lexical Structure

The simplification of written texts is one way for second language learners to access the general message of authentic texts. This linguistic simplification may facilitate the process of learning for non-native speakers but, at the same time, it may perilously reduce their utility for language learning by producing a text that is more difficult to the learners. This study aimed to find out to what extent an intuitively developed simplified version of a text is appropriately written in terms of lexical structure when compared to its original version. In this regard, the original and simplified versions of the novel “Gone with the wind” were compared. The digitized pages of the original and simplified versions were entered into the software of Wordsmith 4.0 for further analysis. The results revealed low percentage of similar words, content words, and key words in the simplified version as compared to the original one. In addition, the high density and low consistency ratios in the simplified version indicates its high compactness, which may decrease its pedagogical value for learning vocabulary and reading comprehension.