Discrete Reading Test Design: An Alternative Of Testing Fast Reading Proficiency

Reading is the most direct and effective way of acquiring knowledge for FL learners. In China as well as abroad, reading has always been the focus of language teaching and learning, so the assessment of a reader's reading ability is then one of the most important criteria to test one's integrative language proficiency. Therefore, reading research has always taken a prominent status in language teaching. In the area of reading tests, however, there exist many unsolved problems. Traditional reading tests pay too much attention to careful reading, while fast reading strategies, such as skimming and scanning, are not given adequate consideration. This paper puts forward discrete reading test method, the essence of which is posing questions for fast reading before a text and then putting after it questions for careful reading. To prove whether the method is beneficial, tests, questionnaires and interviews are conducted in middle schools .The key point of this paper is to emphasize the significance of testing fast reading ability for middle school level learners.This paper is made up of five parts:Part â…  indicates the significance of reading, roughly points out the weakness of traditional reading tests, and puts forward a discrete reading test method.Part â…¡ reveals the definition of reading, which is a cognitive activity, and about which there have been various hypotheses and theories. For instance, the bottom-up model, the top-down model and the interactive model, the last being favored by most reading researchers. Some basic notions, like reading strategy, reading ability as well as discrete reading are illustrated.Part â…¢ evaluates the weaknesses of traditional reading test design and strengths of discrete reading test design. The former is based on Educational Psychometric Model that is only interested in whether the candidates have acquired certain knowledge; the latter is based on Cognitive Information Processing Model that is more interested in how the acquired knowledge is organized in the brain and how it is retrieved. What this thesis advocates is a reading test embodying the assessment of skimming and scanning as fast reading strategies.Part â…£ presents research methodology, analyzes the data from test results, questionnaires and interviews conducted at middle schools and points out someimplications obtained through the research. At least the following three aspects call for reconsideration: reading material selection, reading strategies teaching and grammar issues in reading class.Part V concludes the whole paper, pointing out that discrete reading test is not only more valid in testing fast reading ability than traditional means but also an important way of developing higher rate of reading. Thus discrete testing method is feasible at senior middle schools.