Abstract

1. Senior Project – Interdepartmental (CSC - MLT) - 2005Web-Based TOEFL Reading Comprehension Assistance SiteCleveland Q. CrosbyAdvisors: Prof. Aaron Cass and Prof. Junko Ueno Abstract The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is the most widely used measure of North American English proficiency today. There are numerous study guides to prepare one for this test, however, there are topics that appear on the TOEFL which are not thoroughly explained in such guides, namely, idioms, colloquialisms, and the various subtleties of English verb tenses. The purpose of this application is to give the native speaker of Japanese a more in depth explication of such topics (In Japanese), as well as a more thorough display of the nuances found in English verb conjugations as compared to the Japanese language. In addition to these features, the application contains a module for creating mock-reading comprehension tests which the user can complete in order to gauge the difficulty of the TOEFL. The application is compatible with all major operating systems supporting Unicode (UTF-8) character encoding and Asian character sets, making it accessible to most computers regardless of operating system or web-browser. The Test-Maker Script The mock-TOEFL examinations found on the site are created using a PHP script which takes a delimited text file as an input, and returns a test in the form of an HTML page with which the user may interact. Following the guidelines of the delimiters, one may easily create a test file which can be used by the site. The following delimiters make up the format of the text file. All text found within delimiters must adhere to proper HTML standards. <passage> ~ </passage> : Represents the reading passage that the user is to read. <questions> ~ </questions> : Represents the portion of the text file that contains the questions of the test. <question> ~ </question> : Represents an individual question inside of the <questions> area. <q> ~ </q> : Represents the actual question which is to be answered. <ans> ~ </ans> : Represents the correct answer to that particular question. <choices> ~ </choices> : Represents the multiple choices of a particular <question>. <choice> ~ </choice> : Represents a possible choice for the question. Note: One of the choice strings must be the same as the string found in within the <ans> ~ </ans> delimiters. The script reads the text file and assembles the different pieces of the test into it’s proper order and displays the result as a completed, interactive test. Feel free to ask to see a full test file. Application Screenshots Site Design The entire site is controlled with Cascading Style sheets, which are very helpful tools in Web Design. They control how a page looks without worrying about compatibility. The mouse-over menu bar, which is created using nested ordered and unordered list elements, is also possible with style sheets. There was a slight problem with older versions of Internet Explorer which prevented the use of mouse-overs with unordered lists, but it was corrected with a single JavaScript function. Reading Comprehension This application is geared towards assisting native speakers of Japanese understand the sometimes hard-to-grasp nuances of the English language. Through some research, and consultation with native Japanese speakers preparing for the TOEFL, I found that there were a number of questions regarding verb conjugation and colloquialisms. I also found that most of the guides found in Japan do not offer an extensive listing of Idioms commonly used in North American English, which puts the student at a disadvantage. With this information, I decided to put these the following aspects of English into the site. Verb Conjugations: Twelve different English verb tenses, as well as how their different uses are explained here. Conditional Statements: The different nuances behind using IF and WHEN. E.g. “If I had gone to work” vs. “When I had gone to work.” Phrasal Verbs: A common idiomatic construction found in English which consists of a verb followed by a preposition, which implies a colloquial meaning. E.g. “To Look Over - To take a quick glance at something.” Idiomatic Expressions: Various Idioms found in the North American English which are sometimes hard to grasp for students. E.g. “At the 11th Hour, meaning ‘At the last minute’ and not 11 o’clock.” The Test-Maker Script :Example