| Whether the National Matriculation English Test paper Ⅱ can accurately measure the students’ comprehensive English ability,the content validity of the test is very important.As a comprehensive cloze test in the National Matriculation English Test,it can effectively cultivate and test students’ comprehensive application ability of English knowledge.Moreover,research on content validity is conducive to teachers’ teaching and students’ learning efficiency,so it is particularly important to make an in-depth analysis of the cloze tests.Based on Bachman’s(1996)Framework of Task Characteristics and Test Point Validity Theory of Li Xiaoju(1997),this study aims to explore the content validity of the cloze test in National Matriculation English Test paper Ⅱ.This paper examines the matching degree between the cloze tests and the requirements of language knowledge in the New Curriculum Standard and Examination Syllabus,and discusses the propositional characteristics of the cloze tests with the methods of text analysis,quantitative analysis,so as to provide some suggestions for high school English teaching.The result shows that the cloze tests in National Matriculation English test paper Ⅱ from 2015 to 2020 basically meet the requirements of the New Curriculum Standard and Testing Syllabus and have high content validity.According to the characteristics of input,the average text length of cloze is about 250 words,and the number of new words is no more than two,which meets the requirements of the New Curriculum Standard that cloze is about 250 words,and the number of new words is not more than 5%.The sentence type,levels and distribution of test points as well as the distance between every blanks are appropriate.However,there are also some shortcomings in the design of test points,such as the distribution of genres are not balanced and cohesive devices and the measure of reading skills are uneven.Therefore,the content validity of the cloze tests can be further improved,and the quality of propositions can be optimized,such as designed to test the diversification of cohesive devices and keep the balance of six reading skills required in the syllabus and so on.Based on the above results,this paper summarizes the following enlightenment and suggestions for high school English teaching: 1)When it comes to the sentence type and cohesive devices,teachers should pay much attention to the simple and compound sentence and content of conjunction and reference in teaching.It is suggested to instruct students to know how to figure out division of theme-rheme structure in the analysis of sentences in discourse,so that they can discover discourse logic and use lexical cohesion knowledge appropriately to strengthen the awareness of discourse topic.2)In terms of testing reading skills,teachers should balance the 6reading skills required in the Testing Syllabus,and it is suggested that students develop the habit of underlining key words and topic sentences to acquire higher reading ability.3)In terms of distribution of test points and the level of test points,teachers should pay attention to the content words and discourse levels of teaching.It is suggested that students should be guided to grasp the theme of the text and cultivate the ability to infer and judge the correct choice through the overall grasp of the theme and structure of the text. |
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