Psychometric validation of the Sentence Verification Technique to assess L2 reading comprehension ability

Abstract

Abstract Abstract English teachers use the Sentence Verification Technique (Royer et al., 1979) to determine the readability of written material for their classes. This process requires students to read short passages from a book, followed by isolated sentences. These sentences can be either identical or different from the original passages, in their meaning as well as in their form. For each sentence, students must indicate whether or not its content corresponds to that of the original passage. This paper reports on the design and assessment of an SVT test created for measuring reading comprehension ability, based on four English texts. The instrument was administered to 171 adult English learners, of various levels of English proficiency. The data were analyzed using both traditional psychometric methods and the Rasch model. Results indicate that the test shows high internal consistency, that it respects the basic assumptions behind the Rasch model, and that it is in the recommended range of difficulty for that technique.

The Usage of Meaning Identification Technique in Measuring Reading Comprehension Skills

“…The literature illustrates that the SVT tests is a useful technique for measuring reading comprehension in English language text. SVT tests are often used in measuring reading comprehension skills (Durwin & Sherman, 2008;Lastrapes, 2015;Marcotte & Hintze, 2009;McKeown et al, 2009;Pichette et al, 2014), in measuring listening comprehension skills (Greene et al, 1990;Kertoy & Goetz, 1995;Lehto & Anttila, 2003) in defining reading problems (Carlisle, 1989;Carlisle, 1999;Royer & Sinatra, 1994), as a descriptive study in determining students' reading levels (İlter, 2017;Royer et al, 1990), in measuring the language skills of students of English as a second language (Mestre & Royer, 1991;, in determining the levels of texts (Jones & Smith, 2014;Yazıcı & Kurudayıoğlu, 2017) and in predicting learning skills (Mooney et al, 2016;Mooney & Lastrapes, 2018;Royer et al, 1990).…”