Comprehension Quest
A modern, classroom-friendly reading comprehension screener for learners aged 4–18 — built around 22 short stories and 228 context-rich cloze items, organised into four age-banded forms.
Opens a separate demo application on another host. It is not covered by this site's Privacy Policy; please do not enter a child's real name there.
Talk to usWhat is Comprehension Quest?
Comprehension Quest is a cloze-based reading comprehension assessment. Students read short stories with words removed and choose the best fit from four options. Cloze tasks are widely used by literacy researchers because they require readers to construct meaning from context — a more authentic measure of comprehension than simple recall.
Stories are sequenced from short and concrete (early primary) to longer, more abstract passages suitable for upper primary and secondary readers.
- Built on the cloze procedure (Taylor, 1953) and the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer; Hoover & Tunmer).
- Designed as a brief screener and progress-monitoring tool.
- Not a diagnostic instrument.
- Reliability and validity studies in progress.
22 stories across 4 age-banded forms (early, primary, lower secondary, upper secondary).
~10 blanks per story — 228 items in total.
Each blank offers 4 word choices; the student picks the best fit.
Auto-saving progress — the test can be paused and resumed at any time.
Vocabulary in context — word knowledge applied to meaning.
Sentence-level processing — recognising grammatical and semantic fit within a sentence.
Bridging inference — linking information across nearby sentences.
Each blank is tagged by skill, so results show a per-skill subscore alongside the overall score.
This is a screening task, not a diagnostic instrument.
Results are reported as a raw score, percentage, and per-story breakdown.
Descriptive bands, not norm-referenced cut scores.
Classroom teachers — Screening reading levels at the start of a term.
Literacy specialists — Tracking intervention progress over time.
Tutors and parents — Identifying where comprehension breaks down.
Tuned to the reader, not the other way around
Each student profile carries options that travel with them through every test session, so the assessment fits the learner in front of you.
A per-student switch swaps the reading passage to a dyslexia-friendly font with looser letter spacing and a larger base size — without changing the underlying items.
Choose UK, US, Australian, or South African English on the profile. Passages and answer options are localised, and regional variants (mum/mom, biscuit/cookie) are credited as correct.
An internal toggle hides the story so reviewers can identify items answerable from world knowledge alone — useful for authoring and auditing content.
Re-test the same student to compare any two attempts side-by-side, and capture qualitative observations against each session in Session Notes.
Three steps to a meaningful baseline
Create a profile with name, age, and optional group or class.
The student reads each story and selects the best word for every blank.
Get an instant breakdown by story and skill, with a printable PDF report.
Comprehension Quest is a brief screening task. It asks the reader to fill in missing words across short stories and is one indicator of reading comprehension — not a complete picture. The bands shown are descriptive, not norm-referenced, and were not derived from outcome studies. This score should not be used for diagnosis, placement, eligibility, or retention decisions. A low score is a signal to follow up with a more complete assessment, not a label.
Educator and literacy specialist. Comprehension Quest was designed and authored by Annemarie Roux, drawing on the cloze procedure and the Simple View of Reading.
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Free to try. No setup. Works on any device.
Opens a separate demo application on another host. It is not covered by this site's Privacy Policy; please do not enter a child's real name there.
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