Development of web-based test to measure reading rate of English passages

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02733
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Toyo University
• Principal Investigator: Yubune Eiichi 東洋大学, 総合情報学部, 教授 (70339208)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 神田 明延 首都大学東京, 人文科学研究科, 准教授 (10234155) ; 鈴木 政浩 西武文理大学, サービス経営学部, 准教授 (10316789) ; 山口 高領 立教女学院短期大学, その他部局等, 専任講師(任期制) (60386555)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 読解速度 / リーダビリティ / 語彙レベル / ウェブテスト / 内容理解度

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We conducted fundamental research to develop web-based test to measure learners' reading rate of English passage. We made 100 passages of approximately 100 words with two comprehension questions using four different levels of STEP test sets. We verified the validity of the test set by conducting a pilot test in which 200 learners or more participated. The result shows that we are unable to identify the difficulty level of English passages only through the readability index and vocabulary level since comprehension rate has no correlation with those indexes. This led us to conclude that comprehension rate instead is mainly dependent on the quality and the difficulty level of multiple choice comprehension quizzes after reading the passage.

Free Research Field

英語教育、英語音声学、言語心理学、応用言語学