College English Test (Shandong Volume) Cloze Content Validity Analysis

From the year2005, Shandong province has begun to set the paper for the NMET (NationalMatriculation English Test) autonomously. The overall purpose of this paper is to analyze thecontent validity of the NMET (Shandong province).The study focuses on two points: one is to research the test itself, comparing the contentvalidity and distinctive features of the NMET cloze test from the year2005to2011; the other isto investigate the backwash effect of the NMET (Shandong province) cloze test on Englishlanguage teaching in Shandong senior high school, combining the quantitative and qualitativeanalysis by way of interview, questionnaire and verbal report.As a comprehensive blank filing test in NMET, the cloze test could effectively train andexamine the students' English proficiency. It has been widely used in all kinds of English test inChina, and also accounts for a relatively large score in the NMET of Shandong province.However, there is still room for further improvement of the content validity of the NMET sinceShandong province began to set the paper autonomously. The high school English teacherscouldn't grasp properly the key points of the NMET (Shandong province) and know little aboutits backwash effects. Some English teachers even have some problems in the actual teaching. Forexample, some teachers focus on teaching vocabulary and grammar, instead of training students'ability of discourse analysis. In this situation, it is very necessary to analyze the content validityand the backwash effects of the NMET (Shandong province).Research results show that the NMET (Shandong province) cloze test is a valid testingformat. However, in order to improve the content validity of the test, the words number andwords interval of the cloze test should be decreased. In the empirical research, the high schoolteachers and students and the freshmen are united in their conclusion that the NMET (Shandongprovince) cloze test is quite valid. What's more, most of them agree with the choice of the styleand subjects of the cloze test, which could verify the research results given before. On the basisof the study, the author claims that cloze tests in the NMET (Shandong Province) have a positiveinfluence on Shandong high school English teaching. The NMET attaches great importance tovocabulary learning and students' ability of discourse analysis which should have been paidmuch attention to.