Building A Common Reference Scale Of Rhetorical Structure Analysis Ability For NMEE:an Empirical Study

This thesis is an empirical study on building a common reference scale of rhetorical structure analysis ability for National Matriculation English Examination (NMEE). From1970s, Europe, America, Canada and Japan have all built common reference scales for language ability. At the start of this century, our Ministry of Education issued Curriculum Standards and did the "Can-do" statements of English listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities. Recently, some scholars appealed to set up a common reference scale of English language ability in Asia and many scholars in China also presented ways how to set up common reference scales. Meanwhile, there are lots of qualitative studies on rhetorical structure analysis ability both at home and aboard, which are based on Communicative Competence Theory and Rhetorical Structure Theory. While those quantitative researches on building the scale of Rhetorical structure analysis ability, especially on building the common reference scale of rhetorical structure analysis ability for NMEE are relatively infrequent. In order to improve the testing quality of rhetorical structure analysis ability and build a common reference scale of rhetorical structure analysis ability for NMEE, the definitions of "Can-do" statements of rhetorical structure analysis ability should be clear, especially its dimensionalities and parameters. Based on the views of Communicative Language Ability and Discourse Information Processing Ability, the thesis aims to solve the following two questions:(1) In what elements are "Can-do" statements of rhetorical structure analysis ability for NMEE described and assessed?(2) In what dimensionalities are "Can-do" statements of rhetorical structure analysis ability for NMEE described and assessed? The study analyzed196NMEE papers from1987to2012to find out the definitions of "Can-do" statements of rhetorical structure analysis ability. In order to make sure the reliability of these "Can-do" statements, we used the methods of Rater’s Consistency and Reliability Analysis. The building of a Structure Equation Model helped us find out the dimensionalities of rhetorical structure analysis ability.The results showed that we have picked up30items of "Can-do" statements of rhetorical structure analysis ability in all the NMEE papers from1987to2012. The collection of data helped us build a structure equation model of rhetorical structure analysis ability, which indicated that the "Can-do" statements of rhetorical structure analysis ability are reasonable. Because of the limitation of conditions, the generalization of conclusion based on it is to some extend limited. The validity of the common scale should be further testified.