| Senior High School Entrance Examination(SHSEE for short)is the final examination of compulsory education.It can reflect whether students have met the graduation standard,which is essential evidence for high school enrollment.Reading can test students’ comprehensive language competence,so it occupies quite a large proportion in the English test of SHSEE,and the quality is crucial.Content validity is the most important validity.Tests with high content validity can accurately detect the test objectives.Conversely,if the content validity is low,the results can not meet the test objectives.In addition,the relationship between the English reading tests and English reading education in junior middle school is also an issue worthy of further exploration.On the one hand,it can promote the reform of English reading teaching in junior middle school to a certain extent.On the other hand,it negatively impacts the teaching of junior middle school English reading.The contradiction between examination and teaching becomes sharper with the increasingly fierce competition.Therefore,washback effects of testing on teaching is also a vital point of this thesis.At present,the researches on content validity of English tests have been carried out in various tests and question types.Through these researches,this author finds the following deficiencies:(1)The researches on content validity in China focus on collage English tests and NMET.Still,there are few diachronic studies on specific question types in SHSEE.(2)The researches only focus on the test papers but ignore washback effects of the test papers on teaching and learning.Given the above shortcomings,this thesis takes the English reading tests of SHSEE in Shanxi from2017 to 2021 as samples to explore content validity and their washback effects,trying to solve the following two questions:(1)How is the content validity of English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE from 2017 to 2021 in Shanxi province?(2)What washback effects do English reading tests of SHSEE in Shanxi have on teaching and learning?According to Bachman&Palmer’s framework of task characteristics,the content validity of English reading tests of SHSEE in Shanxi from 2017 to 2021 is studied from six facets: genre,topic,passage length,new words,readability and reading skills by content analysis.Then,according to Alderson&Wall’s washback hypothesis,six experienced teachers in a junior high school in Shanxi province and 224 students in grade 9 are selected to study washback effects by interview and questionnaire respectively.The findings of this research are as follows: First,English reading comprehension tests of SHSEE in Shanxi from 2017 to 2021 have high content validity.However,the layout of some texts is not reasonable enough,the coverage of genres and the investigation of reading skills are not comprehensive.Second,some teachers are positively effected by tests,emphasizing the people-oriented concept,choosing authentic materials and cultivating students’ comprehensive reading skills.While others are negatively affected by tests,stressing the importance of scores and thinking material selection and reading skills should be based on tests.Third,in terms of learning contents and methods,some students are positively affects by tests,tending to choose frequently-tested topics and genres while neglecting the training of high cognitive skills.While others are affected positively,and they choose learning contents based on curriculum standard and develop comprehensive reading methods.In addition,tests have negative washback effects on students’ learning purposes,concepts and progress.Most students take high score as the only objective,emphasizing the importance of mechanical training and adjusting learning progress based on tests.Based on the conclusions that have been drawn,this thesis tries to propose some suggestions for researchers,teachers,and students.Finally,the author indicates the limitations of the research and makes prospects for the direction of future researches. |
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