@CUE
Implementation of ReadTheory in aUniversity EFL Context
Christopher Tempest
Sojo University, Japan
In recent years the increase of online tools and platforms has made extensive
reading for students in an EFL context much more accessible (Dao, 2017; Forster,2014; Khan, Shamin, & Nambobi, 2018). One such platform, ReadTheory(readtheory.org), was recently implemented as part of a second-year compulsory
English course at a Japanese university. As part of the curriculum, students
were required to participate in extensive reading over the course of the year.
ReadTheory, a free online service that aims to improve learners’ reading skills
and comprehension, was trialed during the second semester as an alternative
to similar services previously implemented at the institution, such as MReader(mreader.org) and XReading (xreading.com) (Mcbride & Milliner, 2014). An
overview of ReadTheory and the rationale of its implementation will be briefly
outlined with an explanation of how the platform was utilized in class over thecourse of a fifteen-week semester. Whilst there were some minor drawbacks, theauthor found that the ease of access to the platform, progress tracking, and thelevel adjustment feature had a positive effect on students’ reading. The overall
impressions and merits of the program will be discussed followed by its limitations
and future implementations.

Overview

ReadTheory is a free online platform for teachers, parents, and students thathas K-12 (school education grades from kindergarten through to 12th grade)focused reading comprehension activities. It gives users immediate feedback via
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comprehension quizzes for short texts that are tailored for a user’s individual level.
The main aim of ReadTheory is to help students increase their reading ability andcomprehension by taking short quizzes. Whilst primarily used by students andeducators in the United States, it can be used in a variety of contexts and learning
styles (Khan, Shamin, & Nambobi, 2018).
Once students have registered, either by themselves or through registrationby their teacher, they take a pretest. The pretest consists of eight texts with onecomprehension question for each. Users are strongly recommended not to receive
outside help during the test. The level of the texts starts fairly low, grade 3, andincreases with each correct answer and decreases with each incorrect one. Students
are not made aware of whether their answers are correct; however, the reading gradelevel and lexile number are displayed beneath the text’s title. Upon completion of
the test, the student is assigned an appropriate reading grade based on the resultsof the test. Following this, students can then start participating in reading shorttexts and taking quizzes. The length and difficulty of the texts depend on the gradelevel. The higher the level, the longer and more difficult the texts become. All texts
on the platform are all original texts written by a team of teachers and publishedauthors with a mix of fiction and non-fiction texts. Each text includes several simple
multiple-choice comprehension questions (Figure 1) that give instant feedback anddetailed explanations as to why an answer was incorrect.

Figure 1. Example text and quiz questions. (Grade 3).

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The progress page allows both the student and the teacher to view various
types of data regarding the student’s reading progression. The platform has agame-like aspect to it. For every question they answer correctly and every quiz
they complete, they receive “Knowledge Points” (KP). As students accumulatethese points, they level up and gain a different title for their progress level (Figure2). The number of quizzes taken and passed is displayed as well as the pretestand program average of grade and lexile. The grade level progression data allows
both students and teachers to track their past reading grades and displays theiraverage, indicated by the dashed line (Figure 3).
Finally, the quiz history table (Figure 4) gives a breakdown of all the quizzes
that the student has attempted. Data include the quiz number, title, date taken,grade, and score. Quizzes also have hyperlinks where students and teachers canreview the answers, which can be useful as a review if students struggled with thetext. Teachers can allocate their students into classes manually and have access tothe same information above displayed either by class or by individual. Teachers
can also specify a date range when searching for specific data. Other features are

Figure 2. Example of student progression data.

Figure 3. Example of student grade level progression.

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Figure 4. Example of quiz history.

available, such as written responses to texts and printable worksheets, but neitherof these was utilized for the class and, as such, will not be discussed in this article.

Why ReadTheory?

Firstly, ReadTheory was chosen over the previously used MReader for a numberof reasons. First and foremost, the platform is entirely online, making it easyto access. This makes it more versatile than the previous system which entailed
going to the library, choosing a book, reading it, taking the online quiz, andthen returning the book. Both the texts and the quizzes are contained within
one location. Secondly, ReadTheory also adapts to each student’s level, making
the texts to be more consistent with appropriate reading levels for students. It
can be difficult for students to choose books at an appropriate level. As shownby Holster, Lake, and Pellowe (2017), students often chose materials that werebeyond their level, discouraging them from reading, or chose books that were
too easy and unchallenging. The ReadTheory system adapts to user levels by
increasing the reading grade level of the next text if the student passes the previous
quiz with a pass mark of 90% or above. The reading grade remains the same if thepass mark is 70-89%, and the grade is decreased if the students fail to pass the quiz(less than 70%). The fluctuations of passing and failing quizzes average out to an
appropriate level for students as shown by the dashed line (Figure 3).
Finally, ReadTheory makes it harder for students to cheat at quizzes.
MReader does have some anti-cheat features, such as not allowing students torepeatedly take the same quiz and having a timed delay before students can takeanother quiz (Bibby, 2017). XReading, on the other hand, has several options,84

ReadTheory in a University EFL Context, OnCUE Journal, 11(1), pages 81-91

such as not allowing students to read the same book and having no access to thetext when taking a quiz. It can also show the amount of time taken to read a book,which allows the teacher to see if the student has simply clicked through thebook quickly, an indication that they probably have not read the book. However,based on the former system of using MReader at this university, students oftenchose high-level books based on movies or previously known stories and passed
a quiz without reading the book. This was discovered by the author after several
students reached an incredibly high word count in a short amount of time.
When investigated further, they had claimed they read books based on movies.
When confronted, the students admitted that they had watched the movieand not read the book. In other instances, students opened the quiz first, readthe questions, and then skimmed the book for the answers without making anattempt to comprehend the text. This was observed by the author on a numberof occasions.

Implementation

With the above advantages in mind, ReadTheory was implemented in asecond-year class of 25 students over a 15-week semester. The students were
Pharmaceutical Science majors completing a two-year English communication
course with a four-skills focus. In this particular semester there was more focus
on reading and writing. Students met twice a week for 90-minute classes.
They accessed the ReadTheory site via a link on Moodle, an online Learning
Management System (LMS) which students were already using every class. Oncestudents were registered, they took the pretest which lasted about 30 minutes.
Upon completion, students were then asked to read and complete one text andquiz in the same session, as this would enable the teacher to begin tracking thestudents’ progress. The teacher then gave a short orientation on how to navigate
the site, check their own progress, and read the different texts. The orientation wasgiven after the pretest, as giving too much information could have overwhelmed
the students, distracting them from the test.
The following week, students were asked to read and pass an initial
allocation of ten quizzes. There was an emphasis on passing the quizzes rather85

Tempestthan completing them. This was to ensure that students took the reading andcomprehension of the texts seriously and to think carefully about the questions
and answers, and to deter students from picking answers at random. Students
were given about 20 minutes of class time to do this and were asked to complete
any unfinished quizzes in their own time. The teacher used the class progress data
to keep track of how many quizzes each student had passed and incorporated
this as part of their final grade. Students could also check how many quizzes they
had completed for that week via the same progression page on the site.
After the first week, student feedback suggested that ten quizzes were too
many to manage. This was mainly due to the initial request that quizzes should
be successfully passed rather than completed and resulted in students failingquizzes that were too high for them due to an increase in the reading grade levelfor passing previous level quizzes. These fluctuations in levels, as mentioned
above, meant that students would fail quizzes that were too difficult and havetheir reading grade reduced. They passed the next quiz and had their grade
increased to the previous level where they failed a quiz earlier. Illustrated in
Figure 5, the large circles highlight three instances when a student had peaked ata level and failed the next couple of quizzes. They then reached a level where theycould answer quizzes to a degree where their grade increased again. From thisfeedback, the number of quizzes required to pass was reduced to five, and further
into the semester this was adjusted to have students complete but not necessarily
pass the quizzes.
The structure of giving students time in class to complete the allocatednumber of quizzes continued until approximately three weeks before the endof the semester. Students were graded on what percentage of the number of theFigure 5. Example of fluctuations in grade levels.

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allocated quizzes they completed each week over the course of the semester, andthis became part (10%) of their grade for the semester.

Discussion

ReadTheory was used as an experimental alternative to the previously
implemented MReader. Having texts online made it easily accessible for students
using devices in class and at home. This significantly reduced time and effort,
which in turn provided more class time for them to read a variety of articles.
Due to its portability, students often completed the required number of quizzeseither in class or as homework. Due to the weekly reading structure that wasimplemented, even if students were absent, they knew what was required ofthem via the repetitive nature of completing quizzes each week. Compared withthis author’s experience using MReader, many students in previous classes often
failed to complete the required number of quizzes on time. Initially students weregiven a set amount of words to read by a given time. When the vast of majorityof students either did little or no reading or read movie books, the author asked
the students to read one book every week. By the end of the semester, the vast
majority of students had also failed to do this. However, with ReadTheory, thevast majority of students consistently completed the required number on timethroughout the semester.
The adapted grade levels are a key feature of the site. Basing the subsequent
texts on previously passed and failed quizzes allows for a higher probability thatstudents will have an appropriately leveled text to read. Whilst in some cases
the level might be a little too difficult, the level will decrease if a student fails aquiz. This should give the students encouragement as they will eventually startpassing quizzes when they reach a certain reading grade level. This notion is
supported by Krashen’s (1987) theory of i+1, where i is comprehensible inputthat the student can read and i+1 is slightly above the student’s level. In theory,the student’s initial level following the pretest would be i, e.g., reading gradelevel 3; the i+1 level (reading grade level 4) would therefore be the point wherestudents might fail a quiz as it is just beyond their current level of completecomprehension. As students read more and improve, the potentially challenging
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i+1 should eventually become their new comprehensible input i, making thenew i+1 reading grade level 5.
Finally, after comparing end of semester surveys for the class using
ReadTheory against a class from the previous year using MReader, the author
found 86% of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “Myreading improved during the course of this semester” compared with 78% using
MReader. Whilst MReader has proven popular in motivating students to read
(Cheetham, Harper, Elliott, & Ito, 2016) this above data, within the context of
the university, could be interpreted to show that students feel that they improved
their reading by using ReadTheory. Caution must be used here as there is no data
between the two platforms to compare actual student reading performance; this
only compares students’ feelings towards their own performance. MReader andReadTheory are quite different in that MReader’s focus is on students reading
entire graded books, and ReadTheory is based upon short texts.

Limitations

Whilst there are advantages to using ReadTheory as outlined above, there werealso limitations and difficulties with the implementation, which should give
caution for other users currently using or considering to use the platform in thefuture. Deleted users and lost login information were problems that arose earlyin the course. On some rare occasions user accounts seemed to disappear without
explanation. Upon contact with the ReadTheory staff, missing accounts wererestored. However, on occasion the website staff were unable to restore accounts;
therefore, as a precaution the teacher can print out a weekly report for the class andindividual users. Another issue was students forgetting their login information. If
students don’t register an optional email address with their account, they will be
unable to recover their details, forcing them to create a new account and causing
difficulties for the teacher. To avoid this, when registering students there is anoption to print out login details for all the students.
Another drawback is that all the texts are randomized, which gives thestudents no freedom of which texts they read, and they are prevented fromcontinuing to a different quiz until they complete the current one they are88

ReadTheory in a University EFL Context, OnCUE Journal, 11(1), pages 81-91

reading. Students were not asked to complete a detailed survey regarding their
feelings about these randomized texts and their impressions of the platformoverall, although this could be addressed in the future. However, from theauthors impression, if a student has a text that they are not interested in, thiscould result in students simply guessing answers as a method to continue to thenext quiz. On the other hand, having a mix of fiction and non-fiction texts on
a variety of topics could be good for students, as they are reading about a wide
variety of topics.
Finally, there is the chance that students may specifically choose to
get a number of questions wrong in order to stay at a level where the text
comprehension is overly easy for students, rather than progressing to higher
graded texts. Whilst this may not be immediately detectable, the way in which ateacher grades the participation in the reading progression may aid in deterring
this. For example, a teacher may grade the student on knowledge points orpercentage of correctly answered questions. Relating to this, there is also thepossibility that students will simply guess the answers without reading the text,
which can result in students given overly difficult or easy texts. Whilst there is
no solid solution to this, the course grading structure may encourage students totake the texts more seriously.

Conclusion

The overall impression from using ReadTheory for a semester is that it is a
simple tool to expose students to a wide variety of topics through short texts that
attempt to automatically appropriate themselves to the user’s level. The progress
section gives simple visual indications of a user’s progress, allowing them tocompare a pretest grade to the current progression, as well as allow for review ofpreviously taken quizzes and has a game aspect to encourage users to read more.
From a teacher’s perspective, it is useful to easily track a class’ progress as wellas individual users either over the entire semester or more accurately within a
specific date range. Whilst the platform does have its limitations, the current
implementation in a Japanese EFL university context has shown that students
felt that their reading has improved as a result of ReadTheory, and it has more89

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beneficial features and positive impressions by both teachers and users comparedto the previously used MReader. It has proved to be useful, easy to use, mobileand versatile. Possible future research could include more detailed student surveys
and teacher interviews regarding their use and impressions of the ReadTheory
platform.

References

Bibby, S. (2017). Introducing an extensive reading program: Theory andPractice. Journal of the Faculty of Letters, Kobe Shoin Women’s University, 6,1-16.
Cheetham, C., Harper, A., Elliott, M., & Ito, M. (2016). Assessing student
attitudes towards graded readers, MReader and the MReader challenge. The
Reading Matrix, 16(2), 1-19.
Dao, T. N. (2014). Using internet resources for extensive reading in an EFL
context. Hawaii Pacific University TESOL Working Paper Series, 12, 72-95.
Forster, D. E. (2014). Using web-based extensive reading in the EFL classroom.
Studies in English and American Literature, 49, 81-90.
Holster, T. A., Lake, J. W., & Pellowe, W. R. (2017). Measuring and predicting
graded reader difficulty. Reading in a Foreign Language, 29(2), 218-244.
Khan, S. H., Shamin, R. H., & Nambobi, M. (2018). Learning styles andonline tools: How to construct and effect online learning environment. In
A. V. S. Kumar, (Ed.), Optimizing student engagement in online learning
environments (pp.147-162). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Krashen, S. D. (1987). Principles and practice in second language acquisition.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall International.
McBride, P., & Milliner, B. (2014). Managing extensive reading: Introduction
to M-reader. The Journal of Saitama City Educators, 4, 20-30.

Author bioChristopher Tempest completed his MA in TESOL at University College London
where he did research in Second Language Acquisition and cross-linguistic influences.
He is currently teaching English communication at Sojo University where he90

ReadTheory in a University EFL Context, OnCUE Journal, 11(1), pages 81-91

currently has research interests in Computer Assisted Language Learning, reading,and spoken interactions. ctempest@m.sojo-u.ac.jp
Received: March 9, 2018
Accepted: July 7, 201891