Readability Rating Model

This repository contains the model described in the paper Meta-rater: A Multi-dimensional Data Selection Method for Pre-training Language Models.

Code: https://github.com/opendatalab/Meta-rater

Model Description

This model is a fine-tuned version of ModernBERT-base designed to evaluate the Readability dimension of text quality on a 5-point scale (0-5). Readability measures the ease with which a reader can understand a written text, considering factors such as clarity, coherence, vocabulary complexity, and sentence structure.

Model Details

• Base Model: ModernBERT-base
• Parameters: 149M
• Context Window: 4,096 tokens
• Task: Text quality rating (regression)
• Score Range: 0-5 (continuous)
• Performance: 87.47% F1 score, 94.13% accuracy

Rating Scale

The model uses an additive 5-point rating system:

• 0: absolute not readable
• 1: Somewhat readable but contains significant clarity or coherence issues, complex vocabulary, or numerous errors
• 2: Generally clear and coherent with occasional grammar, spelling errors, or convoluted structures
• 3: Clear and coherent for the most part, using appropriate vocabulary with minor grammar/spelling issues
• 4: Very clear and coherent with very few or no errors, proper punctuation and easy-to-follow structures
• 5: Outstanding clarity and coherence, effective communication with minimal errors that don't interfere with understanding

Usage

from transformers import AutoTokenizer, AutoModelForSequenceClassification
import torch

# Load the model and tokenizer
model_name = "opendatalab/meta-rater-readability-rating"
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_name)
model = AutoModelForSequenceClassification.from_pretrained(model_name)

# Example text
text = "The weather today is sunny and warm. It's a perfect day for outdoor activities."

# Tokenize and predict
inputs = tokenizer(text, return_tensors="pt", truncation=True, max_length=4096)
with torch.no_grad():
    outputs = model(**inputs)
    score = outputs.logits.squeeze().argmax(dim=0)

print(f"Readability Score: {score:.2f}")

Training Details

• Training Data: 747,422 examples from SlimPajama dataset
• Annotation Model: Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
• Training Epochs: 10
• Evaluation Split: 93,428 test examples
• Data Split: 8:1:1 (train:dev:test)

Applications

This model is particularly useful for:

• Content editing and proofreading assistance
• Educational material assessment for appropriate reading levels
• Web content optimization for user experience
• Data curation for language model training focusing on well-written text
• Accessibility evaluation for diverse reading audiences
• Writing quality assessment tools

What the Model Evaluates

The model considers several linguistic factors:

• Sentence structure complexity and clarity
• Vocabulary appropriateness and accessibility
• Grammar and spelling accuracy
• Text coherence and logical flow
• Punctuation usage and effectiveness

What the Model Does NOT Consider

• The specific language the text is written in
• The length of the text
• Usage of placeholders for data privacy or safety
• Content topic or subject matter

Limitations

• Designed primarily for English text
• May not capture domain-specific readability requirements
• Performance may vary for highly technical or specialized content
• Should be used as one factor among others in comprehensive text quality assessment

Citation

If you use this model in your research, please cite:

@article{zhuang2025meta,
  title={Meta-rater: A Multi-dimensional Data Selection Method for Pre-training Language Models},
  author={Zhuang, Xinlin and Peng, Jiahui and Ma, Ren and Wang, Yinfan and Bai, Tianyi and Wei, Xingjian and Qiu, Jiantao and Zhang, Chi and Qian, Ying and He, Conghui},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.14194},
  year={2025}
}

License

This model is released under the same license as the base ModernBERT model.

Contact

For questions or issues, please contact the authors or open an issue in the repository.