An Analysis Of The Validity Of The Zero-class Extensive Reading Periodical Test

Reading, as one of the four basic skills of language learning, is becoming more and more important no matter either for educational or personal reasons at present. Reading in English is a beneficial tool to acquire the latest information and knowledge directly, which makes reading ability more essential. In many large-scale language tests, such as PETS, CET. TEM, of which, the reading comprehension part occupies large proportion of the total score. How to make English language teaching efficiently attracts more attention from teachers and researchers.Zero-class Extensive Reading Course (ZER Course) is a very creative attempt in reading instruction. It stipulates the reading list for students and sets up a formative assessment system closely related to the course. Zero-class Extensive Reading Periodical Test (ZER Periodical Test) is an important part of the formative assessment system. As a newborn small-scale test, it has its own characteristics, but few researchers have done any research on it.In this study, ZER Periodical Test which is held in Southwest University on November.2010 is chosen to be analyzed.98 students of Grade 2009 in Class Nine, Class Ten and Class Twelve are selected from the 14 classes to constitute the subjects. Their test papers are analyzed by investigating the content validity and the construct validity. The content validity is investigated according to the newly-revised framework of characteristics, which is based on Bachman and Palmer's framework of task characteristics. And the construct validity is examined by correlation analysis and one-way ANOVA.The results show that ZER Periodical Test Two has relatively high validity. It can be demonstrated in the following aspects:1) Most of the characteristics basically meet the requirements in the testing and teaching syllabuses. However, some characteristics of input of Partâ…¦like the total length, reading speed and difficulty variables are slightly lower than the requirements. In terms of expected response, most of the reading skills are covered in Partâ…¦. but lacks reading skills about writer's attitude, logical concept and structure of the passage.2) In terms of expected response. Part I to Partâ…¥free from the restriction of multiple-choice questions as in many large-scale tests, and employ many good questions types. Besides, nearly all reading skills are covered in Partâ… to Partâ…¥.3) The results of one-way ANOVA and correlation analysis show that the ZER Periodical Test has high construct validity.