Transcript Test Poster Font Arial – pt 44

Senior Project – Interdepartmental (CSC - MLT) - 2005
Web-Based TOEFL Reading Comprehension Assistance
Site
Cleveland Q. Crosby
Advisors: 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 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 easil y 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 del imiters 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
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 webbrowser.
Reading
Comprehension
This application is geared towards
assisting native speakers of Japanese
understand the sometimes hard-tograsp 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.”
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 mouseovers with unordered lists, but it was
corrected with a single JavaScript function.
The Test-Maker Script :Example