| National Entrance Test of English for MA/MS(NETEM) is a standard selective national test for non-English majors who want to further their studies. People have paid more and more attention to it due to its importance. The aim of NETEM is to select qualified and excellent students to finish their postgraduate studies. Since 2010, the NETEM test is divided into NETEM I and NETEM II. In this paper, the test paper of NETEM I will be selected.The most vital part of the NETEM I is the Reading Comprehension, which accounts for 60% points of the whole marks. Content validity is about whether the test tests what the testing syllabus stipulates to test.The higher the content validity a test has, the more typical and representative the test is. There are many researches about the content validity of CET and TEM, but the researches about the content validity of NETEM are few. This paper investigates the content validity of NETEM I Reading Comprehension from2010 to 2014 from the following two aspects:(1) What are the characteristics of the NETEM I reading comprehension from 2010 to 2014;(2) How is the content validity of the reading comprehension of NETEM I from 2010 to 2014 according to the testing syllabus of NETEM I?Based on the framework of Test Method Facets proposed by Bachman(1990), this paper analyzes the content validity of NETEM I reading comprehension from five aspects: characteristics of testing environment, characteristics of test rubrics, characteristics of input(length, vocabulary, distribution of new information, readability, sentence type, topic and genre), characteristics of expected response(types of expected response, types of question and reading skills tested) and the relationship between input and response. The characteristics of input and characteristics of expected response parts are the main focus of this thesis. With the help of the software WORD and ANTCONC(a corpus software), detailed analysis of the NETEM I reading comprehension from 2010 to 2014 is made to obtain accurate data. There are 30 texts and 150 questions in total. The criterion used in this thesis is the testing syllabus of NETEM I in 2014 and the research framework is the revised framework of test method facets. Furthermore, a comparison is made between the collected data and the testing syllabus of NETEM I in 2014 to investigate the content validity of NETEM I.The results show that the content validity of the reading comprehension part of NETEM I is not ideal.It can be manifested in the following two aspects:(1) Most characteristics of reading comprehension of NETEM I can roughly meet the requirements of testing syllabus. However, the characteristics of input and expected response are not ideal according to the testing syllabus. It mainly focuses on the following aspects:the sentence type in each test paper is unbalanced; text topic and genre areas are too narrow; the coverage of reading skills tested is not comprehensive, for it mainly belongs to the specific information and reasoning and judgment.(2) According to the testing syllabus and five characteristics, it is obvious that the NETEM I reading comprehension from 2010 to 2014 can roughly meet the requirements of the testing syllabus of NETEM I, and the content validity of NETEM I from 2010 to 2014 is not ideal.According to the results, some aspects of NETEM I reading comprehension part need improvement.For example, the text length of the reading comprehension part A should be controlled; the sentence type between each year should be balanced; the topic and genre areas might be widened; and also the reading skills tested can be more comprehensive, for it mainly belongs to the specific information and reasoning and judgment, so questions belong to the overall structure and the relationship between the context might be added.Finally, some suggestions for test designers and test takers are put forward. And the author points out the limitations of this study and proposes recommendations for future studies. |
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