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International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development

Open Access Journal

ISSN: 2226-6348

On the De-Common-Sense Validity of the Multiple Choice Questions in the Reading Comprehension of College English Test Band 4

Jun Liu

http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJARPED/v3-i1/559

Open access

The researcher selected 10 multiple choice questions from the Reading Comprehension of College English Test Band 4, and asked 102 freshmen and 126 postgraduates to answer the questions without reading the source passages. The result shows that the percentage of the correct choice of each of the 7 multiple choice questions out of 10 exceeds the average percentage of the 4 choices for each question. This suggests that the students’ common sense does play a role when they answer the multiple choice questions of Reading Comprehension. The researcher, therefore, proposes a new concept “De-Common-Sense Validity” and discusses two techniques for the improvement of this validity.

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Markus, K. A., & Borsboom, D. (2013). Frontiers of Test Validity Theory: Measurement, Causation, and Meaning. New York, NY: Routledge.
Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bachman, L. F., and Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language Testing in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In-Text Citation: (Liu, 2014)
To Cite this Article: Liu, J. (2014). On the De-Common-Sense Validity of the Multiple Choice Questions in the Reading Comprehension of College English Test Band 4. International Journal of Acdemic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 3(1), 43–49.