Research On The Construct Validity Of The Reading Comprehension Subtest Of NMET:

Researches on construct validity have been concentrated in recent years,mainly in CET 4,CET 6,TEM4 and TEM6,but the researches on NMET are extremely rare.“Seven selected five” reading comprehension in national new curriculum volume began in 2012,which is a new item appearing in recent years.This study adopts the "introspection"(Jin,1997)to verify the construct validity of the reading comprehension subtest of NMET based on the analysis of test-taking process,mainly addressing the following questions:(1)To what extent does the reading comprehension subtest of NMET measure the test-takers' performances in line with the test designer expected to measure?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the reading and test-taking strategies between two groups of students with different English proficiency?In order to address the questions above,both the qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to verify the construct validity of the reading comprehension subtest of NMET.Firstly,two test experts will be invited to finish this reading comprehension test and then record the test-taking strategies of each item.As for the test-takers,a class of students will take part in this test.After wards,four test-takers(including two male students and female students)will be selected for the think-aloud experiment.They will be asked to report the process of performing in the test in order to investigate the test-taking strategies they employed.Finally,SPSS statistical software will be used for quantitative analysis which compares the similarities and differences in the test-taking strategies between two groups with different English proficiency.In the end,the findings are as follows:Firstly,the test-takers' performances is to a large extent in line with the test designer expected to measure.It can be seen that the construct validity of this reading comprehension subtest of NMET is high.Secondly,the similarities of test-taking strategies of high-level students and low-level students mainly include the pre-reading strategies and the lexical level,sentence level and test-taking strategies of reading and test-taking strategies.As for pre-reading strategies,both high-level students and low-level students tend to read quickly to grasp the main idea while only one test-taker chose to read the options directly.However,their differences are mainly in the paragraph level of reading and test-taking strategy.Students of high level are more likely to solve problems by meaning of the sentences and the understanding of the whole paragraph,while students of low level tend to select the options through corresponding the keywords.