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.