Study On The Validity Of The Cloze Test In Chongqing's Senior High School Entrance Examination (2011-2016)

A test validity means whether the test testifies the ability that it attempts to test.If the test is invalid,then the scores of the test fails to achieve the aim intended.A validity study can testify whether a test is valid or not.This paper analyzes the cloze validity(including test point validity,content validity,structure validity and face validity)of 2011-2016 Chongqing Senior High School Entrance Test,by means of testing students and questionnaire survey of the related teachers,it aims to solve the following problems:(1)How is the test point validity of 2011-2016 Chongqing Senior High School Entrance Test?(2)How is the content validity of 2011-2016 Chongqing Senior High School Entrance Test?(3)How is the structure validity of 2011-2016 Chongqing Senior High School Entrance Test from 2011 to 2016?(4)How is the face val idity of 2011-2016 Chongqing Chongqing Senior High School Entrance Test?The results show:(1)test point validity:the sentence-based and discourse-based testing items in the six years account for a large proportion,and they all avoid the items whose answers can be located by a mere look at the words.Among the six-year test papers,all the test items in 2015-paper test the students' competence of understanding sentences and discourses.As the highest-level of test item,the discourse-based test item in the six-year test papers takes up a rather high proportion:30%,50%,20%,30%,40%,40%respectively from 2011 to 2016,in which the discourse-based test item of 2013-paper is comparatively lower,which indicates that the testers have made efforts to give test items above sentence level.Except 2013-paper,all the other five-year test papers avoid taking grammar-based items as the testing focus.Instead,all the six-year papers focus on testing the students' competence of understanding meanings.(2)content validity:A survey of the six-year papers reveals that the articles chosen for testing principally belong to narrative and practical writing types,and we thus suggest some others types be added.The subjects for test are closely related to the daily life of students.2016-paper is a case in point in that the article for test is about flower planting to arouse people's love for life and the enthusiasm to pursue happiness.It is relatively humanistic.The readability indexes of the articles for test in 2011-2016 cloze are "very easy,easy,very easy,fairly easy,fairly easy,very easy" respectively,roughly meeting the criteria set by the English Curriculum Standards and the Test Outline.But the fluctuation of the readability indexes of the articles for test in 2011-2016 cloze shall be improved.(3)structure validity:In the process of doing cloze test,there is a strong positive correlation(p<0.01)between the students' application of the related background knowledge and their scores.Those with 7-8 score starts the test from the understanding of each paragraph' s meaning;In terms of using strategy 11,those with 9-10 score are significantly higher than those whose score are below 6;Compared with those with 7-8 scores,those with 9-10 scores resort less often to the 4 strategies(analyze the inter-sentence relationship,locate the answer after reading the whole paragraph,use the method of exclusion,and find out the answer by mere guess if the article is too hard).The overall tendency is that the higher the score,the more frequently the other ten strategies are applied.Thus the clozes are structurally valid.(4)surface validity:The students are of almost the identical opinion of the five kinds of face validity(overall impression,form,content and style,whether the investigation contents and questions need to be improved).They approve of or almost approve of the validity of the close test.The teachers are of almost the identical opinion of the five kinds of face validity.They almost approve of and partly approve of the face validity.There is no opinion of "strongly oppose" and "disagree".It shows that the cloze has high surface validity.In order to ensure the validity of the cloze,there are some suggestions:(1)For the cloze designer:they should chose more varied genres;set questions and options carefully to avoid the students' using guessing strategies.(2)For the English teachers:they should try their best to provide the students with opportunities to read widely as far as possible.The teachers should pay attention to the cultivation of the students' language ability,but also their humanistic qualities.