A Study On Content Validity Of School-based English Test Papers In Senior High Schools

Testing is a method of educational evaluation.As early as the education phenomenon appeared in the human society,there was a need for educational evaluation,thus examination occurred.Foreign language testing is a new subject forming at the beginning of the 1960 s,and its theories and applications have involved a variety of disciplines,such as linguistics,psychometrics and computer science.For decades,a large number of foreign linguists have made remarkable achievements in the field of language testing.In China,language testing has also been paid more and more attention to.Through consulting the library’s database,the author found that a number of articles on language testing were published on many important journals in China,and they mainly focused on the study of reliability and validity which are two main indicators of language testing.Although there were some studies on content validity of language testing in recent years,most of these papers concentrated on NMET(National Matriculation English Test)and grade examinations such as CET(College English Test)and TEM(Test for English Major),little attention was paid to the school-based tests designed by the teachers themselves,such as monthly tests,mid-term tests,and final tests.In addition,National English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017)proposed some new requirements for English teaching and evaluation,thus the criteria for the assessment of content validity have also changed accordingly.Therefore,this thesis will study the content validity of the school-based tests under the English curriculum standards published in 2017.The main purpose of the study is to discuss the content validity of school-based English test papers of senior middle schools in Chengdu,Sichuan province.And the research will answer three specific questions: 1)How is the content validity of school-based English test papers of senior high schools in Chengdu city? 2)Is there any difference between the test papers of different schools? Which test paper more complies with the basic requirements of the English curriculum standards? 3)What are the merits and demerits of these test papers? In order to find the answers of the research questions,the author explored the English testing of senior high schools in Chengdu,Sichuan province,and selected the sample test papers which were administered in November,2017 as the research subject.The sample test papers are selected from three different middle schools,and the tests are designed for the seniors of Grade Three.The monthly test is a one-month examination organized by a school to measure teachers’ teaching and students’ learning in the current month,which is one way of formative assessments.Thus,the quality of the monthly test papers should be taken seriously,and the design of such papers should be prudent.In order to ensure the reliability of the sampling,the three schools represent different levels,which are National Model High School(Shuangliu Middle School),Provincial Model High School(Experimental Middle School in Chengdu economic and technological development zone)and Municipal Model High School(Longquan No.2 Middle School),respectively.After the review of related researches about language testing at home and abroad and based on validity theories,the thesis compared the content of the sample test papers with the basic requirements of National English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017)to see whether they are consistent.Listening comprehension,reading comprehension,cloze tests,grammatical gap-filing,proofreading,and writing tests of the sample test papers were compared and discussed one by one.Based on Bachman and Palmer’s(1999)task characteristics framework,reading comprehension part was analyzed from the aspects of text length,reading speed,readability,reading topics,reading genres,and reading skills.The analysis of the cloze section was mainly based on the theory of test-point validity proposed by Li(1997),which consists of test-point level and focus factor.The results of the study show that: 1)The content validity of school-based English test papers of senior middle schools in Chengdu city is relatively high.2)Among the three sample test papers,Shuangliu Middle School test paper has the highest content validity,for it greatly conforms to the demands of the English curriculum standards.3)Question items tested in the sample test papers emphasize the context,and the test points in the cloze tests concentrate on the higher level.In addition,the materials selected in the tests are close to daily life and the hot spots of modern society,with interesting content and authenticable language.However,there are also some disadvantages in these tests which impact the content validity to some degree.For example,some passages in reading comprehension are not appropriate in difficulty and they are not presented in the order of incremental difficulty;the coverage of genre of reading material is too narrow and argumentation is neglected;the skill of recognizing the speaker’s or writer’s intentions,opinions and attitudes is barely tested both in listening and reading section.According to the problems exiting in these tests,some suggestions are given for promoting English teaching and English testing,which includes attaching importance to the English curriculum standards,training English teachers with the systematic language testing theories,organizing English teachers to build the item bank,and improving the evaluation system.