| In China, National Matriculation English Test(NMET) serves as one of the most essential national tests to evaluate high school students' language proficiency and select the high achievers. As one of high-stakes tests, the quality of NMET is the top concern for test designers and test candidates. Validity, as an indispensable measurement of evaluating the quality of a test, is considered to be the cornerstone of language testing. Although there are numbers of systematic validity researches on reading tests done by scholars at home and abroad, comparatively few researches have been carried out on the content validity of reading comprehension tests of NMET. Therefore, conducting a detailed study in this field is necessary.This thesis focuses on investigating the content validity of reading comprehension tests of NMET from 2012 to 2015 through qualitative and quantitative methods. A revised assessment framework is employed based on Bachman and Palmer's framework of task characteristics. According to the National English Curriculum Standards, the Teaching Syllabus, the Testing Syllabus and the Testing Specifications, the study analyzes the content validity in coverage and relevance from five aspects: 1)characteristics of the setting; 2)characteristics of reading tests rubrics; 3)characteristics of the input; 4)characteristics of the expected response; 5)relationship between input and expected response.Based on the comprehensive analysis, the major findings are summed up as follows: 1) In terms of test structure and test format, the reading comprehension tests of NMET(2012-2015) remain stable; 2) The genres concentrate on exposition which takes the largest proportion of 31.2%. Argumentation and practical writing share the same proportion of 25%. Narration takes the least proportion holding 18.8%. Concerning the genre distribution, four genres are all covered only in the year of 2012. Two reading passages belong to practical writing in 2015, indicating that students' language application ability has been emphasized; 3) The text length and each passage length are kept within the limits. The sentence length and sentence type are arranged properly; 4) The reading topics are extensive, instructive and interesting with scientific distribution. Among the total 16 reading passages, 11 reading passages belong to social life & culture and personal experience & emotion, accounting for 68.8%. The rest 5 reading passages are about education, popular science & modern technology, biography and human & nature; 5) New information and readability are in a proper arrangement, ensuring a good command of text difficulty; 6) Among the six reading skills stipulated by the Testing Syllabus and the Testing Specifications, skill 2 and skill 4 take an overwhelming proportion holding 76.7%, while the rest four skills have a rather low appearance. The distribution of reading skills should be kept in a good balance.However, some deficiencies are inevitable. For example, the question format of the reading comprehension tests is of no variety. There is only multiple-choice question format adopted in the reading tests. The author suggests that reading tests should employ diverse question formats, such as short-answer questions, information transfer to discriminate the test takers' language competence from different levels.To sum up, the reading comprehension tests of NMET from 2012 to 2015 are in correspondence with the requirements of National English Curriculum Standards(NECS), the Teaching Syllabus, the Testing Syllabus and the Testing Specifications. In addition, they have extensive coverage and high relevance, indicating that the content validity of the reading comprehension tests of NMET(2012-2015) is satisfactory, which is conducive to producing beneficial backwash effect on English teaching and learning process. |
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