Matriculation English The Volume Reading Comprehension Questions Characteristics And Trend Analysis

As the first and the most important test after the implementation of the curriculum reform in 2005, Jiangsu National Matriculation Entrance Test (NMET) in 2008 naturally raised great concern from the public. That is why I have chosen to do my research from the year 2008. With the enactment of the new NMET programme in 2008, the structure of the English test has changed a lot, but no matter how tremendous the change is, reading comprehension is still the most important part in the test, which causes great influences on the scores of the English test and on the final marks. Therefore, it is necessary to do a research on the reading comprehension section of English NMET.By comparing the reading comprehension sections in Jiangsu English NMET from 2008 to 2010 with those in the textbooks Advance with English from module one to eight, this reasearch is supposed to answer the following three questions:1) What are the characteristics of the reading comprehension sections in the latest three years'Jiangsu English NMET? 2) Is there any relationship between the reading comprehension sections in the English NMET and those in the textbooks? 3) What are the pedagogical suggestions from this research?It is found that:1) the reading materials of the latest three years'English NMET are all real, close to life and reflect the characteristics of the times, and the genres of them are basically narrative,argumentative,expository and practical; 2) both the amount of words and the difficulty of the reading materials go up year by year; 3) the aspects to be tested are mainly the following two types:detail and inference, besides, some other forms are added, such as main idea, guessing, computing, and so forth; 4) the reading sections in the English textbooks of Jiangsu——Advance with English is closely related to those in the NMET.Based on the above findings, some pedagogical suggestions are put forward:1) understanding the requirements of reading comprehension in Teaching Requirements of the Curriculum Standard in Jiangsu Province and Directions of Jiangsu English NMET and using them practically in English teaching; 2) making full use of the reading materials and the reading strategies in the textbooks; 3) adding to the textbooks some extracurricular reading materials according to the reading requirements of the NMET, especially some practical ones, such as the transport guide, border crossings, etc.; 4) encouraging students themselves to read as many original English articles and works as possible and paying much attention to some hot issues; 5) attaching importance to the learning of word formation.