Empirical Validation Of End-of-Term Reading Tests For First And Second Year College English Majors

Since English is playing a more and more important role in life, English testing also become particularly important. Being one of the effective methods to evaluate English teaching, English testing is also an important link in the English teaching procedure and an indispensable content of English teaching. Reading is one of the effective ways to obtain information and knowledge, also a very important language skill, usually takes up a p high proportion in the exams. Reading comprehension test is a good test form, which can check the readers’ comprehensive language ability. Reading comprehension test has such features as large range, diverse forms, countless testable and strongly measurable. Furthermore, the end-of-term test of English reading, as one type of achievement tests, plays a substantial role in English language teaching. Validity is the most important indicator for measuring the quality of achievement tests, which refers to whether the content of a set of test is what a test-designer wants to test, or the extent to which the test measures what the test-designers want to measure. Presently, much attention has paid to language testing mainly on CET4, CET6, TEM4, TEM8and other large-scale tests. However, less attention has been paid to university-based English tests, especially the mid-term or erid-of-term tests for English majors. The importance of end-terms tests for national tests is determined by its influence of the teaching design.Therefore, this essay attempts to do empirical research on the validity of end-of-term reading test of the first and second year college English major and explore the cause, and presents the effective methods of reading teaching.The author analyzed the Yangtze university English major students in grade2009’s reading test papers between2010and2011in two English end-of-term; and compared examination contents and teaching syllabus, exam syllabus, the teaching goal, the related theory of language testing; analyzed the relevant data, explained the achievements of the students’ answers and got the validity of the test paper. The study adopted convenience sampling method:100students and10college English major teachers engaged in the teaching of reading from Yangtze University of2009join the interview and questionnaire. The data of this study is the score of the two tests.The research results show that the university English major final reading test validity is not too high but can be accepted, the specific performance face validity is higher, and the content validity, but the content validity can accept and the structural validity need to improve. The test results from a certain degree can reflect the reading teaching and learning effect and the students’reading ability. This test in reading teaching and learning has positive effect but the positive influence is far from enough.