Diagnostic Analysis And Feedback Design Of Reading Comprehension In CEPT

The reading performance is an important indicator of the learners’ English ability. People often adopt the test method to judge whether learners’ reading ability is good or not because of the unobservable reading behavior. Therefore, the design of an appropriate diagnostic test which tells the learners their strengths and weaknesses in reading and gives corresponding measures is necessary. The previous studies mainly focus on the analysis of reading problems existed among readers instead of their strengths. Moreover, few studies have been explored to provide learners feedback for their problems.This study, based on the CEPT reading test and guided by the Verbal Efficiency Theory, aims to explore the readers’ common errors and to investigate the characteristics and frequency of errors among readers at each level from the perspective of reading sub-skills. Based on the diagnostic analysis, it proposes reasonable feedback/suggestions for learners of different reading proficiency in order to improve their reading performance.In this thesis, three research questions are raised:(1) What common errors do the testees usually make in the CEPT reading test?(2) How do the testees of different levels of reading ability vary in errors in the CEPT?(3) What feedback can we give to the testees of the CEPT reading test?Based on the data analysis, the following results could be reached:(1)Test-takers are apt to make errors in word decoding that requires low level abilities and language comprehension that requires high level ones. Those sub-skills that require high level abilities account for the most common errors.(2) The error range and rate of test-takers at low levels should be much higher than those at high levels. Besides, test-takers of different reading proficiency vary in thei r main errors and error rate. However, they can basically handle the details identification best.(3) According to the diagnostic analysis, test-takers at low levels need to strengthen all the sub-skills in different items, while those at high levels shoul d focus on practicing reading rate, inferring, summarizing and using contextual clues to understand words.The research indicates the imbalance on reading ability among foreign language learners. For teachers and test designers, the top priority is to offer an appropriate diagnostic feedback. They can spot learners’ uniqueness and problems, giving them corresponding strategy instruction. For learners, they can understand what sub-skills that haven’t mastered and figure out a solution to improve their readin g ability.