Analysis Of The Reading Comprehension In Jiangsu NMET From 2004-2017 And Its Implications For Senior High School English Teaching

Based on the requirements The High School English Curriculum Standards and The Examination Outline promulgated by the Ministry of Education,as well as Bachman and Palmer's language task characteristics framework and Programme for International Student Assessment(PISA)reading assessment framework,the research analyzes and studies the changing trends of Reading Comprehension in Jiangsu NMET(2004-2017)from two different dimensions: Characteristics of input and expected response.The research procedures include five steps: Proposing the research questions in the first place;Colleting the data;Sorting out the target materials;Analyzing the texts;Reporting the results.The result shows that the reading comprehension in Jiangsu NMET has put forward higher demand of reading quantity and reading speed.The reading samplings have been more concentrated on social hotspots,and they are more argumentative and descriptive.The characteristics of reading comprehension in Jiangsu NMET are:(1)From 2004 to 2007,5 passages and 20 tasks were tested each year in Jiangsu NMET,while 4 passages and 15 tasks have been involved since 2008;(2)Although the number of passages and tasks was decreased,the total reading quantity did not present a decline tendency;(3)Task distribution has shown a regular form as “2+3+4+6” in recent 5 years(since 2013);(4)Reading speed has increased to 130-140 wpm;(5)Among 4 passages each year,genre distributions were not fixed,and argumentations and expositions were more than narrations;(6)Passage topics were various,which covered the topics suggested by Standards,focusing on Human and Society;(7)Passages tended to be more difficult and most of them were chosen from foreign magazines and books like The Economist,Time;(8)Different reading microskills were measured uneven and the tasks about detailed understanding and inferring were the most reading microskills tested.According to the findings,the study puts forward three suggestions for classroom English teaching:(1)Appropriate passages should be selected to maximize the effectiveness of students' daily English reading training;(2)Pedagogical strategies in English reading classes should be improved to develop students' discourse competence and reading speed;(3)Students in English reading classes should be encouraged to read authentic texts from English newspapers and magazines.Finally,the limitations and further research directions are also presented.