Volume : IV, Issue : IV, April - 2014

The Representativeness of Reading Construct in Iran's University Entrance Exam

Mehdi Ruhi Athar

Abstract :

 The study aimed to analyze the reading comprehension questions of Iran's University Entrance Exams to see whether they appropriately reflect the range of constructs delineated in the pre–university English textbooks. To this end, the reading comprehension questions of university entrance exams were categorized on the basis of two TOEFL books. Meanwhile, the researcher used the teacher's manual, the student book introduction and the nationwide test specification to enumerate the emphasized objectives, strategies and skills. The frequency and percentage of each question type were calculated and the comparison between the resultant frequencies was made by the statistical procedure of Chi–Square. The results showed an unbalanced distribution among question types and, accordingly, the underrepresentation of the reading constructs. There should be more weight given to the reading comprehension part of the test, multiple measures of reading comprehension, a variety of reading passages, a detailed test specification and balanced distribution of question types.

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Article: Download PDF   DOI : 10.36106/ijar  

Cite This Article:

Mehdi Ruhi Athar The Representativeness of Reading Construct in Iran's University Entrance Exam Indian Journal of Applied Research, Vol.IV, Issue. IV

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