Testing Reading Comprehension By Multiple-Matching Question

In traditional college English tests (CET), a reading test is mainly composed of four reading extracts, with each of which followed by five multiple-choice questions (MCQ).We know that authenticity is a critical quality of language tests. The authenticity of a reading test is the perceived relevance of the test method characteristics to the features of the target reading situations.Reading is a very important activity in our daily life and work. People read for some purposes. In our daily life, though sometimes people may read novels and the like to experience something, yet more often when they take up reading, they will use skills in expeditious reading to hunt around for information. We often meet such situations in our daily life: we choose an interesting TV program to watch after we read brief introductions of several TV programs quickly; we choose a certain university for ourselves after we read the profiles of several universities quickly etc. Bringing those real situations into our language tests with Multiple-Matching Questions we can test the test takers' reading skills in searching for important information.This thesis attempts to explore MMQ reading tests theoretically and statistically. And the data analyses have confirmed our belief that MMQ is a useful supplementary means of testing reading to MCQ.