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The aim of this study is to examine whether text analysis tools can be helpful in the selection of factual texts for learners of German as a Foreign Language in Asia. Text analysis tools make it possible to determine the level of difficulty of texts according to so-called readability formulae. A specially compiled collection of 50 essay texts were ranked by using these tools according to their level of difficulty. Out of these 50 texts six were chosen for a pair-wise comparison. University students in Thailand and China, majoring in German (n=47), assessed the texts in terms of their relative difficulty. Teachers of those students (n=10) were asked to do the same. The broad agreement of the rankings determined by the tools and by the participants shows that the use of internet tools can facilitate the selection of suitable texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]