A Study Of Reading Comprehension Tests In Nmet Based On Bachman And Palmer's Framework Of Task Characteristics

National Matriculation English Test(NMET for short)is regarded as the most important examination in China.To a great extent,the examination determines the future development of the high school students.English is treated as one of the main subjects.Therefore,the result of its examination has an important impact on the overall performance of test takers.That is to say,its test scores greatly influence which university the candidates will be admitted by in many ways.On the other hand,reading comprehension part in English tests always occupies the highest score.Therefore,as the candidates,it is the key research issue to grasp the rule of reading comprehension part in English tests.Most importantly,the educators must know how to make students get higher scores in the reading comprehension part,which has always been a key issue in academic field.In this thesis,reading comprehension parts of 53 sets of national college entrance examination papers from the 1978 reform and opening up to 2017 were treated as the subject.Through diachronic analysis,this paper is combined with some related knowledge test theories and by reference to National English Curriculum Standards,the Teaching Syllabus,the Testing Syllabus and the Testing Specifications.However,it is mainly on the basis of Bachman and Palmer's framework of task characteristics as a research tool which includes the analysis and research of two aspects: the input and the expected response.Among of them,the input mainly includes five aspects: passage length,speed,sentence,topic areas and genre.On the other hand,the expected respond mainly involves the analysis and research of the two items: response types and reading skills coverage.The main purpose of the test is to understand test-designed characteristics and the main variation tendency of material selection designing of the English college entrance examination at different stages.The main conclusions of this study are as follows: 1)through the study,the writer finds that the length and speed of the reading comprehension tests of NMET starts at a low level,after the numbers of the passage and reading speed increasing,finally to maintain a relatively stable level.2)The topic gradually develops from the initial story to the social life and culture,society and technology.The later topics are richer,including personal experience and emotion,advertisement and human & nature.What's more,it is not difficult to find that social life and culture,as well as personal experiences and emotions,accounted for more 56 %.3)Genre mainly is the narration and exposition whose the proportion in the whose passages is 73.4%.4)The required six reading skills are reflected in the article,the skills 2 understanding explicitly stated information and the skills 4 making inference questions which takes up almost the proportion of 79.7 percent.However,other skills take up a small proportion 5)Response types of reading comprehension are very single,which mainly involve multiple choice questions.All in all,the genre and topics of the reading comprehension tests of NMET are more abundant,practical,epochal and educational value.On the other hand,it not only examines the language basic knowledge and skills of the test takers,but also pays attention to thinking ability,learning ability and cultural quality in English tests.