Validity Study On The Cloze Test Of Shanxi Senior High School English Entrance Exam From2009to2013

Cloze test is widely applied to test students’integrative ability and its validity has always been the focus of scholars at home and abroad. A lot of validity researches on CET4/6, TEM4/8and NMET cloze tests have been investigated, but few studies on the validity of SHSEEE cloze test in Shanxi Province have been analyzed. Therefore, the thesis intends to study the validity of SHSEEE Cloze Test in Shanxi Province in the years2009-2013from four aspects:testing point validity, content validity, construct validity and face validity and trying to answer the following two questions:1. What is the validity of SHSEEE cloze test in the years2009-2013?2. Can SHSEEE cloze test measure students’ comprehensive language ability? To what degree cloze test measures students’ ability?Firstly, the author analyzes the testing point validity of SHSEEE cloze tests in the years2009-2013under testing point validity theory put forward by Professor Li Xiaoju from two aspects:testing point level and focus factor by adopting the method of textual analysis and quantitative analysis. Analysis results show that cloze tests of the five years have high testing point validity except2009. Secondly, content validity of SHSEEE clozes from2009to2013is conducted from the perspective of text input and intended answer with Bachman and Palmer’ Task Characteristics Framework and English Curriculum Standard. The results reflect that SHSEEE clozes during the five years are of relatively high content validity. At the same time, the author also points out that they are limited in genre, the amount of new words noted in Chinese, major testing of discourse level and the distribution of focus factor. Thus, they fail to assess students’ integrative competence in all-around manner. Thirdly, construct validity of SHSEEE cloze test is discussed by employing retrospective report method and analyzing the consistency between participants’ real answering process and intended answer. It is altogether forty students randomly selected from nearly three hundred students in Linfen No.1Middle School. The results suggest that SHSEEE cloze test well measures students’ reading comprehension ability of lexical and syntactic levels. However, students can get scores by adopting some test-taking strategies, so students’ ways of thinking are still influenced by some test-taking strategies. Fourthly, face validity of SHSEEE cloze test is investigated through two questionnaires with the participation of one hundred students randomly selected from nearly three hundred students and thirty experienced English teachers in Linfen No.l Middle School. It can be concluded that91%of the teachers and88%of the students are satisfied with SHSEEE cloze test and convinced that the cloze test has high face validity.Finally, based on the above analysis, the author has put forward corresponding suggestions on the future SHSEEE cloze test in Shanxi province, such as diversify genres, balance the testing of discourse level and meaning factor and avoid the occurrence of cloze items by using test-taking strategies.