| National Matriculation English Test（NMET）is a nationally recognized and widely applicable exam.The Cloze test is an indispensable part in National Matriculation English Test and its content validity affects the quality of the test.The study tends to explore the content validity of NMET cloze test from the following two aspects:1)What are the specific characteristics of cloze test of NMET?2)How is the content validity of cloze test of NMET?Based on Li Xiaoju’s framework of test point validity and Bachman’s framework of language use and language assessment task,this study proposes a new assessment framework for cloze test by examining 18 pieces of cloze tests of NMET from 2017 to 2021.With this framework,this study is conducted on content validity of National Matriculation English cloze test.The study shows that the cloze test of NMET has a relatively high content validity.The main findings are presented as follows: 1)Regarding the characteristics of cloze reading texts,the length of texts can ensure that senior high school graduates of intermediate English level finish it with a reasonable time allocation,and the semantic and grammatical difficulty and readability are moderate,suitable for most test candidates.In terms of the subject areas,the topics all meet the requirements of the curriculum standards on the subject context,though the coverage is relatively limited.The selected topics are all relevant to the students’ life and are inspiring to provoke readers’ thoughts,but some articles still have deficiencies,such as the article of 2020 NMET II involves knowledge of art appreciation,which may lead to “test bias”.And the article of 2017 NMET II is expressed obscurely in both aspects of character and plot description.As for the text genre: passages of narrations and narrative articles with opinions account for the majority of total.Both kinds of articles are clear in context,well-structured.Test candidates need to guess and testify to the story plot and,also to deduce what value the author is inclined to convey or the feelings of the protagonist in the story,which can test students’ comprehensive language application ability.The writing style and specific expression of articles in NMET cloze are in line with the current English teaching and learning,which is in accordance with the idea of “promoting learning through examinations”advocated by the curriculum standard.But the genre is relatively limited.With regard to the characteristics of the test point,the design of NMET cloze test basically conforms to the proposition principle of “mainly testing the substantial words”.That reveals that NMET cloze tests lay less emphasis on the grammatical structure,and focus more on the meaning of passage.In the setting of test questions,the cloze test pays more attention to the understanding of the overall meaning of the text and the accumulation of language expression.Various types of test items which are classified in terms of different ways of deduction are presented,like reasoning from given information,inferring from background knowledge,etc.The difficulty of cloze in NMET that focuses on testing the meaning level depends largely on the type of test items and the distribution of each test item varies from different test papers.Among those test items,cross-cultural knowledge is less involved.2)The cloze text length,readability,topic areas,genre,test point level,focus factors and test item distribution conform to the requirement of “English curriculum standard for senior high school” and the proficiency level of senior high school graduates.So the content validity of cloze questions is relatively high,and is able to assess the overall language ability of test candidates.Finally,according to the research results,this study puts forward some suggestions for English teaching and learning in high schools. |
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