Text Leveling System

Yang the Youngest and His Terrible Ear

RDQ:	1168	Max Word/Sent	50	Total Words	1816		Diff Words	566
Lex	770	Ave Word/.Sent	13	Hi Freq occurs	1238	68.2%	Hi freq	242	42.8%
AR	3.9	Long Sentences	16.5	Low Freq occurs	115	6.3%	Low freq	71	12.5%

Yang the Eldest drew his bow across his 
violin strings and a shower of sparkling notes 
fell over the room.
Yang the Second Eldest drew her bow across 
her viola strings and a rainbow of notes hung 
brightly in the air.
Yang the Third Eldest drew her bow across 
her cello strings and a wave of deep mellow 
notes washed over us.
Yang the Youngest - that's me - drew my 
bow across my violin strings and it went
SCREECH.
I'm the youngest child in our Yang family of 
four children. According to our Chinese custom 
I'm not allowed to call my elder brother and my 
two sisters by their given names. Instead I have 
to address them as Eldest Brother Second]]
Sister and Third Sister. They call me Fourth 
Brother.
My parents are both musicians. Father was a 
violinist in the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra]] 
until a few months ago when we left China and 
came to live in America. Now he has a job with 
the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
Mother is a pianist; she used to accompany]] 
Father when he gave concerts. But she hasn't 
been able to find a job since coming to America. 
Orchestras can use many violinists but they 
don't need more than one pianist. So these days 
Mother spends most of her time shopping and 
cooking to feed all of us.
It isn't easy to feed a family of six on Father's 
salary. He is what's called an alternate which 
means he gets to play only when one of the other 
violinists is absent.
Father also makes some money giving private 
lessons. At first he didn't get many students. 
Parents didn't want to bring their children to a 
music teacher who spoke so little English and 
had such a strong Chinese accent.
But music is music in any language and Father 
doesn't have to say much during the lessons. 
When one of his students plays well he 
smiles. And when a student plays a sour note 
Father just puts on a look of great suffering.
I know that look when Father gives me my 
music lesson it never leaves his face I started 
playing the violin when I was five and now 
four years later Father's expression is still the 
same.
I don't exactly enjoy the lessons either but 
I don't suffer as much as he does. That's because]]
I can't hear what I'm doing wrong. In fact that's 
my problem: I have a terrible ear.
My parents didn't believe that could happen 
to one of their children. They both had good 
ears and so did Eldest Brother Second Sister 
and Third sister.
Eldest Brother was humming tunes even 
before he could talk. Mother taught him both 
Chinese and American songs. Soon he was singing 
"Old McDonald Had a Farm" right on 
pitch even on the "oink oink" and the "quack 
quack" parts.
On Eldest Brother's fourth birthday my 
parents gave him a violin that was one-eighth the 
size of a regular one. He is fifteen now and he 
has been right on pitch ever since.
Second Sister two years younger than Eldest 
Brother started singing along during his violin 
lessons. So she got a viola one-eighth size.
Third Sister who is three years younger than 
Second Sister started by playing the viola that 
had become too small for Second Sister. But she 
was so short that she had to stand up and hold 
the instrument on its end like a cello. She got 
a real cello as soon as she grew tall enough.
When I was born my parents were pleased 
because now they could have a complete string]] 
quartet: two violins a viola and a cello. They 
never imagined that the second violin would 
turn out to be so bad.
But I knew. I began to suspect something was 
wrong because whenever I started singing people 
would move away from me. I loved songs - 
at least I loved the words. In China we often 
sang American songs and the most popular one 
was "Oh Susanna." But my favorite song was 
the one about the farmer and his animals which 
Eldest Brother had taught me.
"Fourth Brother is singing 'Old McDonald 
Had a Farm' "Third Sister announced proudly 
one day.
"No he's not!" said Father. "The tune he's 
singing is quite different."
"Well at least he's doing the oinks and the 
quacks" she said.
Third Sister has always been closest to me. 
It's not just that we're close in age (she's only 
a year older than I am) but when everyone else 
thought I wasn't really trying hard enough to 
play in tune she was the only one who knew 
that I was doing the best I could.
The trouble is that except for the oinks and 
the quacks "Old McDonald Had a Farm"]] 
sounds to me a lot like "Mary Had a Little 
Lamb." I am what they call "tone-deaf."
You'd think that being Chinese and tone-deaf 
could be a real problem because the Chinese 
language is full of tones. If you make the same 
sounds but with different tones you change the 
meaning completely.
Luckily things aren't that bad for me 
because the tones in Chinese slide up and down 
and I can hear the difference between a sound 
sliding up and a sound sliding down. My problem 
is that I don't know how much to slide up or 
down. This is not good when you have to play 
the violin.
At least I didn't have to worry about rhythm. 
Having a terrible ear means I have a problem 
with pitch. But I can count as well as any of the 
Yangs and I always come in on time. The others 
probably wished I wouldn't come in on time. 
Sometimes I suspected they wished I wouldn't 
come in at all.
So there I was coming in on time sliding up 
and down doing the best I could. And as usual 
my best wasn't good enough.
Eldest Brother rolled his eyes. "You have to 
listen harder Fourth Brother!"]] 
"Before you play sing the notes in your head first" ordered Second Sister.
That's easy for her to say. I couldn't even sing the notes in my throat.
"Maybe he's a mutant" said Third Sister. 
"A mutant?" asked Second Sister. "Don't you mean a mute? He certainly needs an extra-size mute."
A mute is a little button-like thing you put on your violin when you want to sound softer. Second Sister had once suggested permanent mutes on my violin.
Third Sister giggled. She's the giggler of the family because she knows her dimples are cute.
We all have our own ways of learning English and Third Sister's is to make a list of five new words every day and memorize them. Mutant was on her list today.
"Mutant means you turn out really different from your parents" she explained. "Fourth Brother isn't lazy; he was just born different. There's nothing he can do about it."
"Nonsense" said Second Sister. She was thirteen and a young lady. Young ladies didn't giggle and didn't put up with nonsense.
"Let's stop talking and get back to practicing" said Eldest Brother. As the eldest of the]] 
family he was more serious than the rest of us. Whenever we started to waste time he quickly got us back to work.
We immediately picked up our instruments again. We weren't scared of Eldest Brother - not very much anyway - but we knew we had to practice.
A very important recital was being planned. For Father's sake for the sake of the Yang family we had to make a good impression.
At a recital all the students play a piece of music and their families and friends are invited to hear them. This was the first recital Father had organized since he started giving music lessons here in Seattle. If his students did well their parents would tell other parents. Then Father would get a lot more students.
"At the end" announced Father "the four of you will be playing a portion from a string quartet. It will be the grand finale of the whole recital."
We all knew the last piece on the program was the most important one. That was the one the audience would remember best when they went home. If we could impress the audience with our skill we would really show them what a great teacher Father was.]] 
Normally I didn't suffer much during my lessons. I just ran through the piece as best as I could and if other people suffered too bad for them.
But this recital worried me. When they heard me playing so badly the parents in the audience would say to themselves "If Mr. Yang can't even teach his own son to play how can he teach our children?"
Now as we practiced I found myself sweating with nervousness. My hand felt unsteady and I couldn't get a good grip on the violin bow. It slid around on the string and produced those terrible screeches. This got on everybody's nerves.
Even Eldest Brother finally lost his patience. "It's bad enough that you play out of tune! Do you have to keep screeching too?"
"I'm sorry" I mumbled. I wiped my hands on my pants then wiped my brow which was streaming. This made my hands wet again and I had to borrow Third Sister's handkerchief.
Eldest Brother sighed deeply and put his violin under his chin. "Let's try those last four bars again."
Second Sister picked up her bow and Third Sister bent over her cello.]] 
One by one the other three Yangs started playing their sparkling notes. When my entrance came I pressed harder to keep my bowing hand from wobbling. But all I got was an extra loud
SCREECH.
A look of deep suffering came over Eldest Brother's face. At times like these he looks a lot like Father. He has the same long face and the same wide mouth that curves down at the corners when he is in pain.
"Fourth Brother" he said fixing me with his sternest look "I know that music doesn't mean as much to you as it does to the rest of us. But you really have to try harder. You know the saying that hard work can overcome ten thousand problems."
"He just doesn't care about playing in tune" said Second Sister. "I don't think there's any use practicing until his attitude is better."
She put her instrument back in its case firmly closed the lid and snapped the catch.
I tried not to show it but I was hurt. I admired Eldest Brother and Second Sister deeply for being so dedicated to music even if I couldn't share their dedication. It must be wonderful to know exactly what you wanted to do. I didn't know what I wanted to do. All I knew was that]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Little support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: More decoding/definition issues

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Some Long/Complex

Text structure: Story/Poem

Inferences: Some implications

Complexity: Several ideas - closely related

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Features

Character traits

Simple Plot

Topic

Cultures

Customs

Talents

*Family & Friends

*Music

Musical instruments

China/Chinese

Rhythm

Low Frequency Words

accent	accompany	according	alternate	announced
audience	borrow	bowing	cello	concerts
curves	dedicated	dedication	elder	eldest
finale	giggler	handkerchief	imagined	immediately
impress	impression	instruments	ladies	language
luckily	mcdonald	mellow	musicians	mutant
mute	mutes	nervousness	orchestra	orchestras
organized	overcome	patience	permanent	philharmonic
pianist	portion	practiced	practicing	private
quartet	rhythm	sake	salary	screech
seattle	shanghai	shower	sliding	sparkling
sternest	susanna	suspected	sweating	symphony
unsteady	viola	violin	violinist	violinists
violins	wobbling	yang	yangs	younger
youngest