Towards Generating Multiple-Choice Tests for Evaluating Comprehension of Arbitrary English Texts

Abstract

We develop a method for generating multiple-choice test for evaluating comprehension of an arbitrary English text and its answer to support more extensive reading in English. Our test consists of one sentence (a correct optional sentence) that is consistent with the selected English text and several sentences (distractor optional sentences) that are inconsistent with this text. Learners select one sentence consistent with the text from multiple optional sentences on reading the text. In our proposed method, the system extracts several important sentences from the text, and replaces at least one word in each of these sentences with its synonym (if possible). One of these sentences is then selected as the correct response, while further changes to the polarities or nouns in the remaining sentences are carried out to generate distractor sentences for the multiple-choice test. Our method has potential to improve the learning effect associated with extensive reading.