（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）不同题型对阅读理解测试分数的影响.pdf

shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis iv 摘摘 要要 阅读是语言习得及外语教学的重要信息输入来源，它同时也是外语 学习者一项重要的基本技能。很多大规模考试都对阅读能力进行考查， 考生在阅读理解题目上的表现将很大程度地影响他们在整个考试中的成 绩。 质量高的测试应该能够准确地测量考生的语言能力，因此阅读理解 测试的设计者应尽量减少一些干扰因素对考生成绩的影响。bachman 在 1990 年提出了一些影响语言测试成绩的因素，而题型是其中的重要因素 之一。 此项研究的目的是考查阅读理解的不同题型是否会对考生的测试表 现产生不同的影响以及考生对不同题型的态度是什么。 研究对多项选择， 简短回答，判断正误及翻译四种题型进行了全面的检验。 此研究把 131 名高等职业学院的学生分为四组，各组采用不同题型 的阅读理解测试题，最后对所有人进行了问卷调查，分析数据时采用了 描述性统计和单因素方差分析等方法。 研究结果表明阅读理解题型对考生的成绩有显著性影响。考生在判 断正误题上得分最高，在简答题上得分最低。问卷调查结果显示大多数 考生喜欢能够取得好成绩的题型，但他们也承认简答题或翻译题能更好 地测出他们的语言能力。本论文最后对外语测试，教学及未来的研究提 shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis v 出了一些建议。 关键词关键词：阅读理解表现，题型，考生的态度 shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis ii abstract reading is one of the most important sources of input in the language acquisition process and in efl (english as a foreign language) learning. it is also one of the four most important abilities for efl learners. reading assessments can be found in most large-scale tests and test-takers performance on reading comprehension may carry decisive weight on their success when taking a test. a good language test should provide an accurate measure of test-takers language abilities, so test designers or developers must minimize the influence of potentially intervening factors on test-takers performance in reading comprehension test. bachman (1990) set out several factors which influence language test scores and the type of expected response is the important one in the category. the aim of the study is to examine whether test-takers reading performance varies when response formats are different and what test-takers attitudes are toward these response formats. multiple-choice questions (mcq), short answer questions (saq), true/false questions (t/f) and translation questions are employed to evaluate test-takers reading comprehension. shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis iii in order to collect data, 131 vocational college students are divided into four groups and different groups receive different sets of papers. each student in the four groups is provided with the same questionnaire. descriptive statistics and one-way anova (analysis of variance) from spss 11.5 are employed to analyze the data. the results of the study indicate that different types of response formats do have a significant effect on test-takers performance. test-takers perform best on the t/f format and worst on the saq format. the questionnaire survey reveals that most of the test-takers like question items in which they can score higher since they are eager to experience a sense of success. but most of them admit it is saq or translation, but not t/f, that can best measure their reading ability. at last, suggestions are provided for efl reading testing, teaching and future research in the thesis. key words: reading comprehension performance, response format, test-takers attitudes 上海交通大学上海交通大学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立 进行研究工作所取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不 包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。对本文的研究 做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意 识到本声明的法律结果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名：黄欣欣 日期： 年 月 日 上海交通大学上海交通大学 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同 意学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许 论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权上海交通大学可以将本学位论文的全部或 部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制 手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 保密保密，在 年解密后适用本授权书。 本学位论文属于 不保密 不保密。 （请在以上方框内打“” ） 学位论文作者签名：黄欣欣 指导教师签名：陈永捷 日期： 年 月 日 日期： 年 月 日 shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis i acknowledgments this thesis would not have been completed without the help of many people. foremost i want to express my gratitude to my supervisor professor chen yongjie whose guidance has proven crucial to the completion of this thesis. it is his ingenious thoughts and profound knowledge that motivated me to perform this study. as my tutor, professor chen has devoted lots of his precious time to scrutinize this thesis and has provided invaluable comments and suggestions for me. my great debt should also go to ms. sun hang and ms. bai juan, whose generous help gave me the opportunity to carry out this study. i also would like to thank those teachers and students involved in this study in weihai vocational college. my final thank goes to all my teachers in the foreign language school of shanghai jiao tong university, from whom i have acquired the knowledge that will benefit me for my whole life. shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 study background reading is one of the most important sources of input in the language acquisition process and in efl learning, and accordingly, it is the primary goal of education. in some sense, proficiency in a foreign language may be more closely associated with foreign-language reading ability (alderson, 1984). reading assessments can be found in most standardized proficiency tests. reading comprehension has always constituted an important component of language tests. test-takers performance on it may carry decisive weight on their success in the whole test. a good language test should have high degree of reliability and validity. test developers must identify and minimize the factors that might potentially affect test-takers performance. there exist many factors affecting test-takers performance. bachman (1990) set out several factors besides communicative language ability which influence language test scores, i.e. test method facets, personal attributes and random factors. among them, test method is the important one, and as to the characteristics of test method, bachman stated that these characteristics, or “facets”, of test methods constitute the “how” of language testing, and are of particular importance for designing, developing, and using language tests, since it is these over which we potentially have some control. (bachman 1990: 111) there are five major categories of test method facet: (1) the testing environment; (2) the test rubrics; (3) the nature of the input the test taker receives; (4) the nature of the expected response to that input, and (5) the relationship between input and responses. the type of expected response of (3) is the important factor in the category. shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 2 some researchers (samson 1983, frederiksen 1984) believe that the type of expected response makes no or small difference when used to test the same abilities; on the other hand, some other researchers (shohamy 1984, lee 1987, wood 1993, alderson 1995, liu 1998, etc.) argue that different types of test are appropriate for measuring different abilities or different components of an ability. the previous studies in this field show mixed results and our understanding of the response format effect is still so small that it is not possible to tell if the test-takers testing performance is influenced by response formats or by other factors. therefore, it is necessary to carry out some research in this field. although there have already been some studies about response format influence on reading test performance, few of them were conducted in china about chinese learners of english. there is a strong requirement for this kind of study in china. some studies (liu 1998, zhu 2004, etc.) in this field are about university students and there is hardly any research about vocational college students whose number has been increasing greatly in recent years since vocational education is advocated in china now. existing studies pay more attention to the most popular types: multiple choice, cloze test and short answer questions. however, there are other types for testing reading comprehension. in this study, multi-choice questions, short answer questions, true/false questions and translation tests are employed to investigate whether test-takers performance is significantly different in these different test types. 1.2 study purpose and significance this study aims at investigating the effects of response formats on chinese vocational college students efl reading comprehension test performance and the relations between response formats and reading abilities. the purpose could enable the study to provide some implications for the teaching and testing of efl reading and some suggestions for improving the validity of reading tests. shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 3 the literature review established the theory base of the study. bachman and palmers (1996) model of communicative language ability and bachmans (1990) categories of test method facet are the main inspiration. through correlation study, one-way anova analysis, questionnaire survey, the influence of different response formats on different test-takers testing performance is investigated and the reasons for this are given. also through data analysis, the study could have some implications for efl teaching (especially in vocational colleges), learning and testing in china. therefore, the conclusion of the study could be potentially valuable for improving the reliability and validity of language reading tests. 1.3 research questions based on the purpose of the study, the present study will address the following research questions and the study is designed accordingly. (1) do test-takers perform differently when different types of response are utilized to measure reading comprehension? (2) in which type of response do the test-takers perform the best and in which type they perform the worst? (3) what are the test-takers perceptions of and attitudes towards the four different types of responses? 1.4 hypotheses of the study according to the research questions above, the following null hypotheses are therefore formulated: hypothesis 1: test-takers do not perform differently when different types of response are utilized to measure reading comprehension. hypothesis 2: in mcq response format the test-takers perform the best and in shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 4 translation response format they perform the worst. hypothesis 3: test-takers like mcq response format most and like translation response format least. 1.5 layout of the thesis the thesis is composed of six chapters. chapter 1 mainly concerns the research necessity, research background, the research purpose, the research questions and hypotheses. chapter 2 is the theoretical considerations of reading and chapter 3 is the theoretical considerations of reading assessment. chapter 4 describes methodology used in this research, including the study design, pilot study, participants, instrument and measurement adopted, rating criteria, the procedure to do data analysis and the questionnaire survey. chapter 5 reports the results of data analysis which are collected from two channels: test takers performance in the reading test and information they provide in the questionnaires. the final chapter is mainly about the findings of the present study and the conclusions arrived at. suggestions for future research are made in view of the limitations of the present study. shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 5 chapter 2 basic considerations for reading the theoretical framework for this thesis is twofold: research in the areas of language testing and of reading. when we look at assessment of reading comprehension we might think about what readers are doing when they read. if no attempt is made to answer this question while assessing reading, any measure or description of reading proficiency we suggest is meaningless (mary, 2004). as widdowson (1979) puts it, reading is an interactive process in the light of combining textual information with the information a reader brings to texts. it is such a complex phenomenon that its process is not easily understood despite of numerous strenuous efforts made by researchers, educators and psychologists. since reading is a complex phenomenon involving interactions between the human minds and written symbols, it is safe to assume that presenting a precise definition of reading comprehension is not an easy task. nevertheless, great efforts have been made on the broad outline of theories and research on the reading, reading ability as well as reading comprehension process, in order to teach this skill in a better manner and assess it properly and validly (barnett, 1989). 2.1 what is reading? what is reading? there are numerous answers to this question. according to mcginnis (2) recognize and build rhetorical frames that organize the information in the text; and shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 7 (3) link the text to the readers knowledge base. reading to learn is usually carried out at a reading rate somewhat slower than general reading comprehension. in addition, it makes stronger inference demands than general comprehension to connect text information with background knowledge. reading to integrate information, write and critique texts reading to integrate information requires additional decisions about the relative importance of complementary, mutually supporting or conflicting information and the likely restructuring of a rhetorical frame to accommodate information from multiple sources. these skills inevitably require critical evaluation of the information being read so that the reader can decide what information to integrate and how to integrate it for the readers goal. in this respect, both reading to write and reading to critique texts may be task variants of reading to integrate information. both require abilities to compose, select, and critique information from a text. reading for general comprehension it is the most basic purpose for reading, underlying and supporting most other purposes for reading. general reading comprehension is actually more complex than commonly assumed. these abilities are often taken for granted by fluent readers because they usually occur automatically; that is, we make use of these abilities without giving them much thought if we are fluent readers. in l2 (second language) contexts, however, the difficulties that students have in becoming fluent readers of longer texts under time constraints reveal the complexities of reading for general comprehension. because of its demands for processing efficiency, reading for general understanding may, at times, even be more difficult to master than reading to learn, an ability that is often assumed to be a more difficult extension of general comprehension abilities. 2.3 defining fluent reading comprehension shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 8 reading for general comprehension is, in its most obvious sense, the ability to understand information in a text and interpret it appropriately. however, comprehension abilities are much more complex than this definition suggests. fluent reading must occur rapidly in almost any purposeful context, and the more rapidly a text is successfully read, the better the various processing components are likely to operate. related to rate is the notion that specific processes must be carried out efficiently in combination if comprehension is to take place. grabe the top-down model by goodman (1967); and the interactive model by rumelhart (1977). bottom-up model of reading (text-based model of reading) the bottom-up model views the process of reading as one in which readers proceed letter by letter to combine them into words, then string the words into sentences. one of the most influential and complete bottom-up reading models was proposed by gough in which the reading process was portrayed as a serial fashion. starting from graphemic information at the bottom (letters and words), the reader transforms a letter character into a sound (phonological representation), which is in turn recognized as a word. then word is related to larger units at the top, i.e., grammatical classes and sentence structures, and is assigned semantic representation and conceptual ideas through a series of encoding and recoding processes for further transformation. carrel (1982) depicted this theory as follows: it (reading) was reviewed primarily as a decoding process of reconstructing the authors intended meaning via recognizing the printed letters and words, and building up a meaning for a text from the smallest textual units at the “bottom” (letters and words) to larger and larger units at the “top” (phrases, clauses, inter-sentential linkage). top-down model in the late 1960s, the concept of the “role of the reader” began booming. goodman (1967) proposed that reading process was a psycholinguistic guessing game, rather than a process of getting meaning from a passage in a word-by-word manner. the readers bring a shanghai jiao tong university m.a. thesis 12 great deal of prior knowledge, expectations, assumptions, and questions to the text and, given a fundamental understanding of the vocabulary, they proceed to read as long as the text confirms their expectations. that is, familiar words are first recognized and then less familiar ones are partially recognized with the help of the readers existing knowledge of the language and of the topic. therefore, the reader is seen as an active, selective individual, who coordinates a number of skills and strategies to facilitate comprehension (silberstein, 1987). according to the top-down model of reading, existing knowledge together with a purpose for reading is used to anticipate the content of a text and select only the data that is essential for that purpose. as in aldersons (2000) descriptions, goodman (1982) proposed that, readers guessed or predicted the texts meaning on the basis of minimal textual information, and maximum use of existing and activated knowledge. interactive model schema is fir