An Empirical Study On Assessment Of Four Elements In Relation To Reading Comprehension In NMET

National Matriculation English Test(NMET),as one of the most influential national tests,has always been a heated topic.It not only focuses on testing linguistic elements such as lexis,syntax and texts,but also measures students'reading competence.As an indispensable part in NMET,reading comprehension has been studied in some aspects,such as test forms and test strategies,but these studies mainly focus on content validity and washback effect.Although some scholars explore lexis or text difficulty,comprehensive studies by year and region are extremely scare.In view of this,the study tries to explore four elements of reading comprehension,namely lexical element,syntactic element,textual element and reading competence by year and region.The results of the thesis are drawn out.Firstly,in terms of word concreteness and off-list words,an obvious fluctuation exists from 2010 to 2014 and no obvious fluctuation exists in word length and lexical variation;in terms of word concreteness,obvious differences appear and no significant difference exists in word length,off-list words and lexical variation among four regions.Secondly,for sentence count and syntactic similarity,there exists an obvious fluctuation from 2010 to 2014 and no fluctuation exists in sentence length;for sentence count,a significant difference appears and no difference exists in sentence length and syntactic similarity among four regions.Thirdly,for connectivity and deep cohesion,there exists an evident fluctuation from 2010 to 2014 and no obvious fluctuation exists in referential cohesion and readability;for referential cohesion and deep cohesion,significant differences appear and no significant difference exists in connectivity and readability among four regions.Fourthly,for understanding,analysis and synthesis of competence,a significant fluctuation appears from 2010 to 2014 and no significant fluctuation exists in appreciation and evaluation;for understanding and analysis and synthesis,significant differences appear and no obvious difference exists in appreciation and evaluation among four regions.It is hoped that the findings will not only fulfill the blankness of related studies on reading comprehension in NMET,but also provide reference for English tests and instructions.