Easy-to-answer web-based questions with considerable explanatory power to predict EFL-learners´ basic skills

This paper is a report on the findings of a trial web-based test conducted on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Japan after the two-year qualitative analysis on our own computer-based tests. Through the two years of small scale surveys to detect the efficiency of two newly developed types of computer-based tests, we found that the levels of vocabulary knowledge, along with the learners´ awareness of their own strategies, had some influence on their reading comprehension. In addition, the results suggested write-in-answer questions had more power to identify learners´ weaknesses than multiple-choice questions did. Based on these conclusions, we incorporated the two types of computer-based tests into our web site in order to confirm the efficacy of the previous results with the view of quantitative descriptive analysis. The main purpose of providing the web-based tests is to understand EFL learners´ problems in comprehension skills and to give them proper advice accordingly.