A Content Validity Study On Reading Comprehension Tests Of Hubei NMET (2008-2013)

Nowadays, testing has become an integral part in the process of Englishlanguage learning and teaching with its backwash effects upon students’ learning andteachers’ teaching. National College Entrance Examination is one of the mostimportant national tests of selecting talents into different universities and has beenattracting public attention all the time. Since2002, National Matriculation EnglishTest (NMET) at a provincial or municipal level was designed independently, thequality of NMET-designing has always attracted wide social attention. Validity hasbeen seen as the essential standard of assessing the quality of a test, which is a basicstarting point of language testing. In recent years, many researchers at home andabroad have made studies of validity of language testing in different levels of differentkinds of tests, but the studies on validity of National Matriculation English Test(NMET) at provincial or municipal level are much less. It is necessary to carry outstudies in this aspect.This study attempts to explore the content validity of Hubei NMET from2008to2013, focusing upon the reading comprehension tests of Hubei NMET through thequalitative and quantitative analysis on the basis of Bachman and Palmer’s taskcharacteristics framework (1999), according to the National English CurriculumStandards for Senior Schools (NECS), the Teaching Syllabus, the Testing Syllabusand the Testing Specifications of Hubei province. It aims to explore the contentvalidity from the following two aspects:(1) the content coverage of the readingcomprehension tests of Hubei NMET from2008to2013;(2) the content relevance ofHubei NMET reading comprehension tests in recent six years (2008-2013).The major findings of the current study are summarized as follows:1) the testsremain stable in the aspect of test structure and format, and well meet therequirements of the Testing Syllabus and the Testing Specifications of Hubei NMET, while only multiple choice question is used in reading comprehension tests of HubeiNMET without other test formats; the test is extensive in its topics and genres, butin the year of2011and2012, the topics distribution of Hubei NMET is narrow, itneeds to be more balanced; each passage length and the total length of fivepassages keeps within the limits set by the National English Curriculum Standards(NECS), the Testing Syllabus and Testing Specifications, but it seems slightly abovethe requirements, it needs to be controlled better; reading speed and new words aresatisfying with the requirements of the Testing Syllabus, Testing Specifications andthe Teaching Syllabus; the difficulty of sentence and passage are controlled well;the six reading skills required by the Testing Syllabus and the Testing Specificationsof Hubei NMET are almost covered in the six papers and needs to be more fullybalanced.2) The reading comprehension tests of Hubei NMET (2008-2013) correspondwith the National English Curriculum Standards (NECS), the Teaching Syllabus, theTesting Syllabus and the Testing Specifications for reading comprehension part with acomparatively higher content validity. Generally speaking, the reading comprehensiontests of Hubei NMET (2008-2013) are valid and practical.Based upon the results, the author provides some related suggestions forimproving the content validity of Hubei NMET reading comprehension tests in thefuture and promoting the future English learning and teaching, followed by somelimitations in this thesis and future research direction.