| Senior high school entrance examination(SHSEE)is an important examination which involves a large number of students and the social influence of the exam is huge.As a selective exam,the result of the exam can determine whether the examinees are able to enter senior high school and what kind of senior high schools they can enter.Therefore,it is of great significance to guarantee the quality of the tests of SHSEE and to ensure the scientificity and fairness of SHSEE.In the English tests of SHSEE,reading comprehension tests account for a large proportion,so it influences the quality of the whole English test paper.In the assessment of the quality of tests,validity is thought to be one of the most important indicators.Therefore,to do research on validity of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE is of great importance.In this research,we studied the content validity of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE in Shanxi Province from 2011 to 2015.Based on Bachman's framework of characteristics of language use tasks,the content validity of the tests was studied from three aspects: text input,expected response and relationship between input and response.The research questions are as follows:1.How is the content validity of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE in Shanxi Province from 2011 to 2015 in terms of three aspects: text input,expected response and relationship between input and response?2.What are the characteristics and tendency of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE in Shanxi Province from 2011 to 2015?In this research,an analysis framework of the content validity of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE in Shanxi Province was established based on Bachman's framework of characteristics of language use tasks,in combination with the characteristics of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE in Shanxi Province.Then the framework wasused to analyze the tests and the results were compared with the requirements of English Curriculum Standard and Test Syllabus to determine the content validity of the tests.As for the items not explicitly stipulated in English Curriculum Standard and Test Syllabus,the results of previous researches were used as reference.Meanwhile,the characteristics and tendency of the tests were also analyzed and summarized.Major findings of the research are as follows:Firstly,the content validity of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE in Shanxi Province from 2011 to 2015 is not very high,which can be illustrated from three aspects:(1)From the aspect of text input,the distribution of topics lacks diversity;text length of some passages is too long;the rate of unmarked new words is relatively high in 2015 and Type/Token Ratio(TTR)of the passages is also high.(2)In terms of the expected response,the proportion of questions testing the students' ability to obtain specific information is too high.Besides,the designing of some questions lacks logic and some questions do not test the students' reading comprehension ability.(3)As for the relationship between input and response,the proportion of questions testing students' understanding of the whole passage is relatively low.Secondly,there are some unique characteristics of the tests:(1)The topics of the texts are closely related to the students' life.(2)The readability of the texts is relatively high,showing that the texts are easy to understand.Thirdly,the tests appear some trends:(1)The average text length of Part One increases from 2011 to 2015,except 2013.(2)The rate of unmarked new words increases much for the past two years.(3)More information is conveyed with pictures since 2014 and the number of questions about the pictures increases.(4)The proportion of questions requiring students' background knowledge and abilities increases much from 2011 to 2015,even though it decreases a little in 2015. |
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