A Study Of Test Validity Of The Extensive Reading Course

Test validity as well as the washback effect are very important concepts in the field of language testing and relevant studies are also very fruitful.However,these studies mainly focus on large-scale tests such as College English Test-Band 4/6,Test for English Majors-Band 4/8 and the National Matriculation English Test and so on while relevant studies on school achievement tests have received less attention.Though school tests are not as widely used as large-scale tests,they are more closely related to both teaching and learning in school context and have non-negligible washback effects on teaching and learning.As for school achievement tests,content validity matters most for its vital influences on the washback a test brings.The present study aimed to investigate the content validity of the final exam of an extensive reading course at the School of English Study,Xi'an International Studies University to better promote the teaching and learning of the extensive reading course.The researcher of the present study had analyzed the content validity of the test concerned from content relevance and content coverage to find out its possible influences on the teaching and learning of the extensive reading course.Meanwhile,questionnaires as supplementary instruments were distributed to ten teachers and seventy-five students to obtain a general understanding of the influences of the test in order to validate the predication from content analysis of the test.Findings from the study showed that the content validity of the final exams of extensive reading course was not very high as some test contents were irrelevant to the test purpose and the content coverage of the test contents did not accurately measure students' reading abilities.What's more,the inadequate content coverage probably narrowed both teaching and learning contents which was proved by the questionnaires.Both teaching and learning contents had been affected by the final exam especially for learning contents as quite a lot of students had admitted that they only learned what were likely to be measured in the final exam.Hence,enhancing the content validity of the test is of great importance for facilitating the positive washback it exerts on the teaching and learning of the extensive reading course.