This study examines the effects of text length and question type on Korean EFL readers’ reading comprehension of the fill-in-the-blank items in Korean CSAT. A total of 100 Korean EFL college students participated in the study. After divided into three different proficiency groups, the participants took a reading comprehension test which consisted of 4 reading passages (2 short and 2 long) from the Korean CSAT, followed by multiple-choice fill-in-the-blank questions and open-ended inference questions. The longer version of the passages was made from its originally restored version in which one or two paragraphs were added. The results showed that the college students performed better on the long passages than the short ones. In addition, the college students’ reading comprehension test performance was affected differently depending on the type of questions. The findings of the study provided implications on how to select and construct reading passages for high-stake nationwide examinations, such as the Korean CSAT.

The purpose of this study is to compare questions types of Korean EFL textbooks of the seventh national curriculum (current textbooks) with those of the sixth national curriculum (previous textbooks). This study found that there were significant differences in question types of receptive skills, listening (monologues, dialogues), and reading (narrative, pragmatic) between current and previous textbooks in terms of the level of comprehension. There was no significant difference in question types of expository reading passages between current and previous textbooks. Although higher-order questions are also important to make language class more interactive and communicative, this study as well as previous ones shows that questions of literal comprehension were heavily used in current textbooks, especially in listening. Although current textbooks presented more questions of inference and personal response than previous textbooks, those questions were minimally used. Both reorganizatinal and evaluative questions were rarely used in current and previous textbooks. In short, because current textbooks still rely on lower-order memory questions, they do not require substantive thought from students. Thus, this study suggest that EFL textbooks use less literal comprehension questions and more communicative questions such as reorganization, inference, evaluative and personal response.