The Extensive Reading Foundation's Online Self-

Placement Test

The Extensive Reading Foundation in conjunction with Mark Brierley, Richard

Lemmer and Brett Reynolds

Background

No online placement test of graded reader reading levelEPER's test is commercial and not widely availableEPER's reading test takes a hourEPER's placement test is cloze and involves writing

Overview

The OSPT: • is designed to rough-match fluent reading ability to

already published graded reader series• uses the ERF Graded Reading Scale to set reading

levels• will be freely available to everyone• is an informal placement test and should not be used for

evaluation• uses already published graded reading material as

source texts• is still in development (pre-beta)• instructions will be in (easy) English initially (later with

multiple-language interfaces)• is funded by the ERF

The data

The following data will be collected:• background information

o nameo institution (for students)o years studying Englisho years doing ERo first languageo option for emailing the results

•  performance data on the test Note: No privately identifiable data will be leave the ERF or be made public at any time

The data

The data from the tests will be used to:• refine the test• compare ability levels for subjects within age groups

and L1s and between them The data will not (initially) be made available to the general public

We'll probably write an academic paper about the test and its design and another about the data it generates

The techy stuff

The ERF OSPT:• is adaptive - the algorithm responds to previous

performance• is timed - reading time and response times are logged and

form part of the algorithm• has no back-tracking - students cannot go back to the text

when answering comprehension questions• asks what students think - there are questions on how easy

students found the text• has a pool of texts - new ones can be added for different

contexts

Here's the pre-beta version:https://160.252.102.11/erfospt/

The test - the first page

The first page - they select a text at or about their level

They are taken to a text at or about their level

The test - the test questions

Impressionistic questionComprehension questions

Impressionistic questions about the text they just read

Comprehension questions - content

Guidelines:• Easy - no trick questions, no difficult vocabulary or grammar,

no double negatives• Explicitly stated or unequivocally implied information• Story-based - Non-trivial information on characters and

places and key information• In order - information follows the text• One item per question

o The tall thing in the story is a person named John The tall thing in the story is a person The person's name is John

• Unrelated questions

Multiple-choice questions - how many?

Number of choices

Number of questions

Chance of guessing

Items to write

5 3 1/125 20

4 3 1/64 16

3 4 1/81 15

2 7 1/128 7

Comprehension questions

Around 10 true/false questionsWritten by two peopleEdited and selected by a third person

The test - adapting to performance

Next test chosen based on performanceEasier text or more difficult text"Homes in" on student's level

Contributors

The ERF wish to thank the following publishers for allowing us to use portions of their graded readers in the test.

    

Asking for help

The ERF would like volunteers to help with the development of the test by:• asking their students to take the test• suggesting appropriate texts• write texts for us• giving feedback on how students take the test • contributing ideas for how to design the test• contributing ideas for how to publicize the test 

          in fact any help at all ....

Question Time

Who would use the test?Should the test be password protected?Should teachers be allowed to set up group tests for their   students and have data reported to them?Should we prevent students from taking the test more  than one time so they don't 'improve' their rating?What should we do with the overall data?

Thank you for your time

For more information please go to www.erfoundation.org/