Effects Of Different Item Types On Reading Comprehension Test Score

Reading is an important way for people to obtain information and communicatewith each other. Reading is one of the most important sources of input in the languageacquisition process and in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learning. Readingcomprehension has constituted an important part in language test. Different item typescan measure corresponding aspects of reading abilities. Test scores of readingcomprehension takes a great proportion in high school English tests. The most often useditem type in reading comprehension is multiple-choice questions (MC). This type isassumed to test the objective ability of students. Another item type is short answerquestions (SAQ), which is the representative of testing subjective ability of students. InNMET (National Matriculation English Test), the item type of reading comprehension ismultiple-choice questions. This item type can not test students’ reading abilitycomprehensively.The specific aim of this study was to investigate this issue, to conduct a comparativestudy of MCQs (the representative test approach of objective testing) with SAQs (therepresentative test approach of subjective testing) in terms of validity to verify ourhypothesis that short answer questions would have more validity than multiple-choicequestions in reading comprehension tests, by comparing the effects of MCQs and SAQson testing language learner’s reading comprehension. Altogether120second-year highschool students who come from Huang He Middle School, Xi’an, participates in thestudy. The author adopts the quantitative and qualitative study.