A Study On Content Validity Of English Reading Comprehension Tests In Senior High School Entrance Examination Of Chongqing

Senior High School Entrance Examination(SHSEE)can both examine the academic standards of junior high school graduates effectively and play a vital role in selecting students for senior high school.Recently,with the reform of the basic English education,the patterns of reading comprehension tests in SHSEE of Chongqing have changed a lot.The proportion of grammar has decreased while more emphasis has been laid on the test of students' thinking ability,especially in the part of reading.Reading is an essential skill that every language learner has to get and accounts for a large part of the examination.Therefore,this paper will do research on the content validity of the reading comprehension tests in SHSEE of Chongqing from 2015 to2019,aimed at providing some data for the test makers and some suggestions for teachers and students in junior high school.In this paper,the background,significance and framework of the research will be introduced firstly.Next,there will be a literature review of some studies about reading comprehension tests and the validity of them from some researchers at home and abroad.Then the next step is to present the theoretical basis: validity and Bachman and Palmer's framework of language task characteristics.By using the methods of the quantitative and qualitative research,the content validity of reading comprehension tests in SHSEE of Chongqing will be studied and analyzed from seven aspects: format,length,amount of new words,readability,type,topic and pattern.Finally,there will be the findings of this research and some suggestions for the test makers,teachers and students.The findings of this research are as follows:Firstly,meeting the requirements of English Curricular Standards for Compulsory Education,the reading comprehension tests in SHSEE of Chongqing have reached a relatively high content validity.Secondly,there are three main characteristics of reading comprehension tests in SHSEE of Chongqing from 2015 to 2019.The first one is that the texts,with a small amount of new words,is of medium length,and are not so difficult.The second one is that there are a wide range of types and topics which can provide much information and are close to the life of junior high school students.The third one is that the patterns are variable in order to examine different kinds of reading skills.Generally,the tests tend to include more topics in the English Curricular Standards,and pay more attention to the deep understanding of reading texts.Thirdly,the conclusion of the analysis can provide some data for the test makers to improve the quality and validity of the examinations and some suggestions on the teaching of reading for teachers and strategies of reading for students in junior high school to improve their reading ability.