Measuring Passage Contribution in ESL Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Reading comprehension items are valid to the extent that they measure what subjects have understood of the stimulus material. This article reports an empirical analysis of two administrations of two reading tests: the first time, without the reading passages, and the second time, with the passages. Data from the two administrations were used to calculate the passage dependency of each test, that is, the extent to which questions can be answered without reading the texts upon which the questions are based. The two tests in this research, Davis Reading Test (Davis and Davis 1956) and Cooperative English Tests (Educational Testing Service 1960), exhibited little passage dependency. The stability of item types across the two presentation conditions is discussed, and a hierarchy of item‐type difficulty is established using latent trait measurement logits of difficulty. The results of this study suggest that classroom teachers should examine commercially available tests carefully for passage dependency. Furthermore, in constructing reading tests, teachers should avoid writing items that test general knowledge. Instead, teachers should strive to write items that test memory organization and that reveal whether or not inferences have been drawn.

The Effects of Proficiency Level and Passage Content on Reading Skills Assessment1

“…By comparing the results of this study with those of previous ones (Perkins and Jones 1985;Lee and Musumeci 1988) some similarities and differences can be observed. Both the present study and Perkins and Jones utilized Rosenshine's taxonomy; therefore direct comparisons can be made.…”

“…Moreover, items that assessed literal compre hension and inference of explicit details were found to be at the easier end of the scale and FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANN&WNlER 1998 items that assessed multiple string inferences were found to be at the difficult end. Perkins and Jones (1985) investigated the passage dependency of two commercially available reading tests. They utilized the taxonomy of skills by Rosenshine (1980) as a means of assessing reading comprehension of forty-five undergraduate students.…”

ESL Reading: Schema Theory and Standardized Tests

“…Support exists for using native-speaker reading tests to measure the reading level of nonnative readers (e. g., Aron, 1986;Perkins & Jones, 1985). However, Bridgeman (1985) argues that reading tests designed for native English speakers may not accurately measure the reading level of nonnative English speakers.…”

Avoiding Obstacles to Student Comprehension of Test Questions

“…We found a lack of specific guidelines in the literature for formulating or assessing items for reading comprehension tests at a high-proficiency level, where authentic academic texts are used. Furthermore, the recommendations that we did find (e.g., Hughes, 1989;Nuttall, 1982;Perkins & Jones, 1985;Shohamy, 1985) were not, on the whole, accompanied by a comprehensive theoretical framework which could be relayed to teachers, thus eliciting their cooperation.…”