1. Level test
Assess the reader's current ability and assign one Reading Level from 1 to 30.
불러오는 중…
Assess the reader's current ability and assign one Reading Level from 1 to 30.
Recommend books at the reader's level, plus a slightly easier and a slightly more challenging option.
Build up reading and comprehension-check results, and adjust the reader's level whenever needed.
Hope Reading Level
Hope Library scores both readers and books on the same 1-30 integer scale. Internally, neighboring levels are grouped into 14 grade tiers to manage vocabulary and sentence complexity. The grade label is a reference to aid understanding — the actual basis for recommendations is the reader's demonstrated reading ability.
| Hope Level | Grade tier | Korean sentence | English sentence | Reading characteristics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1~4 | Preschool | 7단어 이하 (최대 10) | 7 words or fewer (max 10) | Basic everyday vocabulary. Concrete words like family, home, food, animals, colors, numbers, weather, and feelings; one idea per paragraph. |
| 5~6 | Grade 1 | 8~10단어 | 8~10 words | Vocabulary at the level of a 1st-grade elementary textbook. Short, clear sentences with basic connecting words. |
| 7~8 | Grade 2 | 10~13단어 | 10~13 words | 2nd-grade-level vocabulary and simple cause-and-effect or conditional sentences. Readers begin short passages that explain "why." |
| 9~10 | Grade 3 | 13~16단어 | 13~16 words | 3rd-grade-level vocabulary. Basic social-studies and science terms are understood with context or a simple gloss. |
| 11~12 | Grade 4 | 16~19단어 | 16~19 words | 4th-grade level. Readers distinguish a topic sentence from supporting sentences and follow some compound sentences and simple definitions of new terms. |
| 13~14 | Grade 5 | 19~22단어 | 19~22 words | 5th-grade level. Readers handle compound sentences with noun and relative clauses and track how information relates within a paragraph. |
| 15~16 | Grade 6 | 22~25단어 | 22~25 words | 6th-grade level. Readers work through longer sentences and varied clause structures, connecting a passage's main idea to its supporting details. |
| 17~18 | Middle school 1 | 25~28단어 | 25~28 words | Middle school 1st-year level. Readers handle core vocabulary across subjects and follow an explanatory structure of definition-then-example. |
| 19~20 | Middle school 2 | 28~32단어 | 28~32 words | Middle school 2nd-year level. Readers follow a definition-example-application flow, synthesizing information and inferring meaning from context. |
| 21~22 | Middle school 3 | 32~36단어 | 32~36 words | Middle school 3rd-year level. Readers identify how a claim relates to its evidence and follow the basic argument structure of expository and persuasive writing. |
| 23~24 | High school 1 | 36~40단어 | 36~40 words | High school 1st-year level. Readers work with core academic and standardized-test vocabulary and analyze passages that include a claim, evidence, and a counterargument. |
| 25~26 | High school 2 | 40~45단어 | 40~45 words | High school 2nd-year level. Readers handle standardized-test-level vocabulary and layered arguments, judging how sound the evidence is and how a rebuttal answers a counterargument. |
| 27~28 | High school 3 | 45단어 이상 | 45+ words | High school 3rd-year level. Readers work with specialized vocabulary and some academic style, engaging with fully developed arguments and abstract concepts. |
| 29~30 | College & adult | 제한 없음 | No fixed limit | College and adult level. Readers accurately read academic style and specialized concepts, critically engaging with complex logic and context. |
Each number is the actual Hope Reading Level shared by both readers and books.
These figures aren't a rule for trimming existing books — they're the target length used when writing new reading material for that level. Values increase gradually between levels.
| Level | Korean | English |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 1,500~3,000자 | 400~800 words |
| Level 5 | 2,300~4,000자 | 600~1,100 words |
| Level 9 | 3,000~5,000자 | 800~1,400 words |
| Level 13 | 4,000~6,500자 | 1,100~1,800 words |
| Level 16 | 4,800~7,600자 | 1,350~2,100 words |
| Level 17 | 5,000~8,000자 | 1,400~2,200 words |
| Level 21 | 5,500~9,000자 | 1,550~2,500 words |
| Level 25~30 | 6,000~10,000자 | 1,700~2,800 words |
A level isn't a lock that restricts which books a reader can access. Around the reader's current level, we offer an easy read, a well-matched read, and a slightly challenging read together, so readers naturally move up over time.
Methodology
A book's level is not set by intuition. It combines two independent measurements: a published, externally validated formula, and a judgement model. The two look at different things, so together they were more accurate than either alone.
For English we use the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Kincaid et al., 1975) as published: sentence length and syllables per word give a US grade. We do not choose the coefficients, so anyone measuring the same text gets the same number.
Korean has no equivalent standard formula. So we used 80 Korean-English translation pairs in our own library as a bridge, fitting the Korean measure to reproduce the grade its English twin receives. This connects Korean to the international scale indirectly.
A formula only sees sentence length and syllables — it cannot see a difficult idea written in short sentences. So we also take excerpts from the beginning, middle, and end of the book and ask a judgement model how hard the writing is to read, then average its answer with the formula's.
We weight them equally because we have not yet found evidence for favouring one over the other. If we do, we will change it.
We compared against 40 books whose levels our librarians had assigned by hand (20 Korean, 20 English). The figures below are correlation coefficients — the closer to 1, the more closely the measurement moves with human judgement.
| Method | English | Korean |
|---|---|---|
| Formula alone | 0.55 | 0.87 |
| Judgement model alone | 0.53 | 0.88 |
| Both combined (current) | 0.64 | 0.91 |
| Method used before Sept 2026 | 0.17 | unusable |
The earlier method leaned heavily on a graded vocabulary list. When a difficult word was missing from the list it was dropped from the calculation, so harder books could score as easier. We expanded the Korean vocabulary list from 4,781 to 123,146 entries and moved scoring to the two methods above.
The method and the figures above were verified on 28 September 2026. If a particular book's level does not match how it actually reads, please tell us — a person will look at it again.
The 30-level system isn't a number that ends with the test result — it's a guide to your very next read.
This guide is based on Hope Library's 30-level standard (LEVEL-SYSTEM.md) and the actual LEVEL_TIERS implementation. It is updated together with the code whenever the operating standard changes.