The Extensive Reading Foundation's Online Self-Placement TestThe Extensive Reading Foundation in conjunction with Mark Brierley, Richard Lemmer and Brett Reynolds

BackgroundNo 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

OverviewThe OSPT: is designed to rough-match fluent reading ability to already published graded reader seriesuses the ERF Graded Reading Scale to set reading levelswill be freely available to everyoneis an informal placement test and should not be used for evaluationuses already published graded reading material as source textsis still in development (pre-beta)instructions will be in (easy) English initially (later with multiple-language interfaces)is funded by the ERF

The dataThe following data will be collected:background informationnameinstitution (for students)years studying Englishyears doing ERfirst languageoption for emailing the resultsperformance data on the testNote: No privately identifiable data will be leave the ERF or be made public at any time

The dataThe data from the tests will be used to:refine the testcompare ability levels for subjects within age groups and L1s and between themThe 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 stuffThe ERF OSPT:is adaptive - the algorithm responds to previous performanceis timed - reading time and response times are logged and form part of the algorithmhas no back-tracking - students cannot go back to the text when answering comprehension questionsasks what students think - there are questions on how easy students found the texthas 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 questionsImpressionistic questionComprehension questions

Impressionistic questions about the text they just read

Comprehension questions - contentGuidelines:Easy - no trick questions, no difficult vocabulary or grammar, no double negativesExplicitly stated or unequivocally implied informationStory-based - Non-trivial information on characters and places and key informationIn order - information follows the textOne item per questionThe tall thing in the story is a person named JohnThe tall thing in the story is a personThe person's name is JohnUnrelated questions

Multiple-choice questions - how many?

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

The test - adapting to performanceNext test chosen based on performanceEasier text or more difficult text"Homes in" on student's level

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

Asking for helpThe ERF would like volunteers to help with the development of the test by:asking their students to take the testsuggesting appropriate textswrite texts for usgiving feedback on how students take the test contributing ideas for how to design the testcontributing 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 timeFor more information please go towww.erfoundation.org/

*I didn't add the ERF Board members to this list as it is an ERF project*do u have a copy of their test?

the lat I saw it was a cloze test

*funding = when we put it on the ERf website

*we should have an "I agree to the terms of the test' button here too I think. We'll probably need them in the final version to protect us and the publishers' materials.

Maybe make this two screens?a) are you new or previous user?b) then a choice of an input page aimed at the right type.

Having both here can confuse low ability learners.

I assume we need to institution so we can record data fro them, but what if they misspell it, or say the university of Shinshu or Shinshu daigaku?

Suggest they put in their name as an option some will want to do it anonymously*most learners will be tempted to read it all. The instruction isn;t clear that the text increases indifficulty(we know that they don't)

Suggest radio buttons next to each

(easy, ok, hard)

This will give us more info about the person

if so we need a 'continue button'

*There should be some instructions.

Read this and click stop when you finish. If it's too hard you can click stop at any time. Continue

Then they see this..*we need this twice?

*Mark please add details in the next few pages about how the test works. *Mark please add details in the next few pages about how the test works.