Achievement Tests for Literary Reading in General EFL Reading Courses

Abstract

This chapter presents a discussion of how to use literary texts in achievement tests for general EFL reading courses based on my testing practice at a Japanese university, where learners at different English proficiency levels are enrolled. Although the use of literary texts for foreign language teaching has been examined in various contexts, most investigations reported in the literature have been done from a teaching perspective, presenting teaching procedures. Although some innovative proposals for literature testing have been presented recently (for example, Spiro, 2010), they tend to assess integrative language performance, of which literary reading is only one component. This chapter presents a discussion of how to address literary reading itself and to assess its multifarious aspects (also see Chapter 8 by Oku and Chapter 19 by Lambrou). I argue that achievement tests using literary texts need to differ from those with expository texts or practical texts such as e-mails and menus. Simultaneously, they should include both test items for general reading comprehension and those for genre-specific traits.