A Study Of Content Validity Of NETEM â…¡ Reading Comprehension

Reading ability is the premise of obtaining information and expanding horizons. For a majority of foreign language learners, reading is a significant channel to study and increase their language knowledge and competence because of the lack of authentic learning environment. Reading comprehension has long been the focus of China’ English teaching, and endowed with rich content and high score in English tests of various kinds. Therefore, it is of great importance to construct a reading test with high validity.Since2010, the National Entrance Test of English for MA/MS Candidates (NETEM) has been sub-divided into two kinds of exams: NETEM I and NETEM Ⅱ. As a subject of unified national examination, NETEM II is designed to select qualified professional master candidates for institutionofhigherlearning and scientific institutes. To date, researches concerning NETEM II are very few since it is a new exam.Taking the significance of reading comprehension and NETEM II into consideration, the author aims to explore the content validity of NETEM II reading comprehension part. Based on the framework of task characteristics proposed by Bachman&Palmer (1996), the reading requirements stipulated in corresponding test syllabus and the actual characteristics of NETEM Ⅱ reading comprehension, the author puts forward a more feasible revised assessment framework, which will be employed to investigate the reading comprehension component of NETEM Ⅱfrom five perspectives, namely, the setting, the test rubric, the discourse input, the expected response, and the relationship between input and response.Results indicate that NETEM II reading comprehension parts from2010to2014have high content validity, which can be manifested in the following four aspects:1)reading passages in NETEM Ⅱ are in line with the requirements of relevant test syllabus, and keep stable in terms of test structure and format;2) there is a wide range of topics, which are authentic, interesting and instructive, in reading passages;3)reading materials are of appropriate difficulty level and discrimination;4) all the reading skills stipulated in testing syllabus are covered.However, some issues are found during analysis, which need to be improved. For instance, reading passages concerning popular science are too few; as for genre, only exposition and argumentation are tested; the passage length of traditional reading comprehension is not well controlled; only extensive reading ability is tested; all response types of questions are objective items.At last, on the basis of analysis results, some constructive recommendations are put forward for both test designers and test takers.