A Validity Analysis Of Multiple Choice Questions In Senior High School Reading Comprehension Tests

From the English learning perspective, reading comprehension in high school plays an essential role and the proportion of scores implies its importance in English testing as well. The obvious purpose of reading comprehension test is to objectively reveal the learners'reading competence. If a test can test what it supposed to test, it has good validity. In this case, when we judge whether a reading comprehension test is valid or not, the main criterion is to see how effective it can reveal the learners'reading competence.At present, most of the English tests and exercises in senior high school take multiple choices as the only method. In this way, the scores of multiple choices are regarded as an only judgment on one's reading competence. However, if the test method itself has some shortcomings, it can hardly reveal the learners'competence objectively and convincingly. It is obvious that the larger amount of correct choices one ticks does not equate one's real competence. In order to prove this truth, the present research has been devised and complemented.First of all, the thesis reviews the theories related to reading testing and then analyses the merits and defects of multiple choices as reading test method. The thesis does a survey to 60 senior high school teachers and 99 students of Grade 2 by the way of questionnaires and test paper. Through the investigation and analysis, three conclusions are reached, i.e.: (1) a disparity between the multiple choices results and objective reading competence. (2) guessing on the part of test takers in multiple choice results. (3) distraction from the real reading purposes in reality.The data collected concern both teachers and students, which the thesis analyses in great details. During such a process, the thesis efficiently integrates the questionnaires from teachers and the students, the test paper done by the students and the interview to some students. At last, relative implications and suggestions are proposed according the above discussion.