A Comparative Study On The Validity Of Cloze Tests In Guangxi National Matriculation English Tests Before And After The Curriculum Reform

With the development of new national curriculum reform,National English Test Paper III has been replaced by New National Curriculum English Test Paper in Guangxi,leading to the changes in the both of the form and score of cloze test.Hence,it is necessary to study on the validity of cloze tests of Guangxi National Matriculation English Test before and after the curriculum reform with the hope that some referential suggestions will be put forward for teaching.Based on the theoretical foundation of the testing point validity of cloze test by Li Xiaoju and framework of task characteristics by Bachman and Palmer,combining the New English Curriculum Standards(2003)and testing syllabus,this study takes the cloze tests in National English Test Paper III from 2012 to 2014 and the New National Curriculum English Test Paper from 2015 to 2017 as the samples,and adopts both qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore the differences of testing point validity and content validity of cloze tests of Guangxi National Matriculation English Test before and after the curriculum reform.This study attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What are the changes between the NMET papers before and after the curriculum reform in terms of testing point validity?(2)What are the changes between the NMET papers before and after the curriculum reform in terms of content validity?The results indicate that after the curriculum reform testing point validity is relatively high and the testing point level and testing focus are acceptable,which is embodied in the decline proportion of discourse level and the rise of sentence level.The testing focuses such as grammar,collocation and meaning are all included,and meaning still takes great proportion.In terms of the content validity,even though its topics are more various than before,they are still monotonous;the genres are unitary with the high proportion of narration;the length is beyond the requirement of testing syllabus but it is still in a standard stage;and the readability is generally in medium stage,which accords with the New English Curriculum Standards(2003)and testing syllabus.Finally,based on the result analysis,some suggestions are proposed for test writers,senior high school English teachers and students.For example,the test writers are suggested to render the topic and genre in a more diversified way;teachers are suggested to develop students’ logical and reasoning ability,and students are suggested to cultivate reading ability.