Can the Reading Construct Be Examined outside the Reading Context? An Investigation of the Construct Validity of an English as a Foreign Language Reading Test

Abstract

This paper examines the construct validity of a multiple-choice reading test from the epistemological stance that supports a close relationship between test construct and test context. It aims to evaluate the extent to which the test tasks not only target the reading construct, but also come to grip with the specific test context (Katalayi & Sivasubramaniam, 2013). Fifty (50) multiple-choice items taken from the 2017 English state examination (ESE) were administered to 496 Grade 12 secondary school students and a concurrent strategies questionnaire was used to elicit information on participants’ use of strategies during test writing (Katalayi & Sivasubramaniam, 2014). The findings indicate that, although the fifty item questions cover the whole range of reading construct by targeting all the processing levels; there is, however, a predominance of items that require text processing at higher level than those items that require text processing at lower level. This is to suggest that since the ESE includes higher level test items it does not reflect the context of the ESE; and therefore, it is untenable in the educational practices of language teaching and testing.