This paper investigates the progress of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in reading comprehension tasks measured using an online tool ReadTheory. We draw comparisons between the results of two groups of students in different stages of their studies, attempting to determine how well the ReadTheory tasks reflect the expected achievement for their respective levels. The data was collected from the tasks completed by 24 freshmen (1st year) students and 20 junior (3rd year) EFL students at the English Language and Literature department at the Faculty of philosophy, University of Zenica, who are nominally expected to be at B2 and C1 proficiency, respectively. The quantitative measurement consisted of their task completion success rate, total number of tasks completed, knowledge points (KPs) acquired (a RT internal achievement metric), maximum task level attained and the speed reaching that level, and the ability to maintain that level having reached it. The results suggest that the difference in performance between the two groups is not as pronounced as initially expected, with freshmen students on average scoring somewhat better than the junior students, while showing less uniformity in success rates within the group. The KP metric is shown to offer a more precise framework for measuring performance, tilting the average success rate in favour of the junior group, but only by a slight margin. Both
groups managed to reach similar levels of task difficulty and, once reached, the maximum level was on average easily maintained by both groups. The surprising result was the marked speed advantage in reaching the maximum level that freshmen students have over their junior colleagues. The results would imply that the usage of ReadTheory improves the reading comprehension skill at the levels of study investigated, measured both by average tasks scores and KPs earned.
However, RT appears to have limited use in assessing the progress in reading comprehension skill over time between the 1st and 3rd year students, not allowing for a quantitatively accurate insight into the advancement in reading comprehension skill that is expected to occur.
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