The Interaction between Task and Meaning Construction in EFL Reading Comprehension Tests

Abstract

This study investigates the interrelationship between meaning construction and testing tasks. The study's basic hypothesis is that a reader's mental model continues to develop throughout the testtaking process. Thus, testing tasks are information sources which affect the ongoing construction of the test taker's mental model. Within the framework of this study, the ability to comprehend a text is considered to be the ability to construct a mental model of the text. Current thinking in the field of language testing emphasizes the need for taking into account the processing involved in the testtaking situation and not solely the product. Thus, in order to study the test-taking process in greater depth and, specifically, to examine the interrelationship between testing tasks in different formats and the test taker's on-line meaning construction, an exploratory study was carried out. Think-aloud data were obtained as subjects responded to both multiple choice and open ended comprehension test questions written in both Hebrew and English on an EFL reading test. The subjects were 28 10th-grade high school students studying EFL. The analysis of the verbal protocols revealed that testing tasks function as an additional information source which interacts in one of four ways with the continuing development of the test taker's mental model: (a) integrating new information into an existing information structure; (b) constructing a new information structure; (c) confirming an existing information structure; and (d) newly integrating existing information structures. The results are discussed in relation to the validity of reading comprehension tests and implications for instruction and evaluation.