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

Abstract

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.