Passage Dependency in Esl Reading Comprehension Tests

Abstract

Reading comprehension tests are supposed to measure students' understanding of what they have read; answering a question correctly should depend entirely on information contained in the associated reading passage. However, both teachers and students suspect that general knowledge and sound guessing may enable one to perform substantially better than chance, even with little knowledge of the reading passage. Studies of “passage dependency” in tests for native speakers of English confirm this suspicion. This paper reports an experiment which measured passage dependency in one major ESL test: the reading comprehension section of the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP). We administered one form of this section (20 items) to 60 adult subjects: 30 native speakers of English and 30 non‐native speakers of varied language backgrounds. Half of the subjects in each group received an ordinary version of the test, with a reading passage preceding each set of five questions; the other half received only the questions, with appropriate instructions (the “passage‐out” condition). The results indicate the extent to which the test is passage‐dependent for both native and non‐native students. Test items varied considerably in their passage dependency. We suggest that passage‐dependency is one measure which can be used to select good reading comprehension test items.

Measuring Passage Contribution in ESL Reading Comprehension

“…Research using the passage-out and passage-in conditions has been conducted by Weaver and Bickley (1967) and Connor and Read (1978). Weaver and Bickley reported that "the Ss who had no reading passage to aid in answering the items, nevertheless, correctly completed 67% as many items as Ss with all the reading passage" (294).…”

“…Connor and Read measured the passage dependency of the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP) reading comprehension subtest and reported that "the mean PDI [passage dependency index] for our MTELP (.59) seems large" (155). 1 In our review of the literature on empirical studies of passage contribution, we found only one study (Connor and Read 1978) in which an ESL population had been employed as the subject pool. In view of the importance of passage dependency to an understanding of ESL reading comprehension and in view of the lack of ESL studies which examine passage dependency, this investigation was undertaken.…”