THE STEPS IN CONSTRUCTING A VALID READING COMPREHENSION TEST

Khusnul Lia Fatmawati/ 130210401002

ABSTRACT
Reading skill is essential in the classroom. Students can gain any information through
reading activities. However, reading without comprehension means nothing. It is like the key
of reading skill itself. Reading comprehension requires the student to know and to understand
the idea of a piece of writing and some supporting details. In order to measure students
ability in reading skill, the teacher usually gives a reading comprehension test. A good test
must fulfil the requirements such as validity, reliability and practicality. However, validity
becomes the first consideration in constructing test because it deals with accuracy. A valid
test means that the test measures what is intended to measure. When the test has validity, the
teacher is able to know the students achievement accurately. The teacher should know what
reading sub skill that is going to be measured. Then, the teacher should decide about test type
and text type that is going to be used. The teacher should make a table of specification first
before writing down the test items. The last step is providing the answer key of the test.
Key words: reading comprehension, test, validity, steps.

INTRODUCTION
Reading activity is very necessary in our lives. It is actually not only for academic
purposes but also for our daily lives. Recognizing letters and words is an important step to
start learning about reading skill. However, the important thing is about comprehending the
meaning of what is being read. Comprehension is like the key of reading skill. Reading
without comprehension means nothing. Reading comprehension can be defined as the activity
of comprehending about what you are reading. The application of reading comprehension is
not as easy as the definition. It is not simply to teach, learn or practice it. Reading
comprehension becomes one of the pillars of reading activity. Reading comprehension
requires every reader to comprehend or construct meaning from the text. There are two
elements in reading comprehension which are vocabulary knowledge and text
comprehension. Vocabulary knowledge is used by the reader to comprehend the text.
In order to know about the students achievement in reading skill, the teacher usually
give the students a reading comprehension test. Reading comprehension test is the most
familiar type of reading test. It is to measure students ability in gaining and comprehending
any information from a piece of writing. However, the teacher has to think deeply about the
validity first anytime he or she constructs a test. Validity deals with accuracy. A valid test

means that the test should measure what is intended to measure. The teacher has to make sure
what sub skill that is going to be tested. When a test is not valid, the test result will be bias.
The teacher cannot know about students ability for sure. There are four kinds of validity that
needs to be required by the teachers when constructing a test. Here are the explanations:
a. Face validity
Face validity relates to the appearance of a test. If a test item looks right to the
other testers, teachers, moderators, and testees, it can be described as having at
least face validity (J.B Heaton, 1991: 159). Therefore, it is important to consult
with the other English teachers or the colleague before administering the test in
order to make sure about the face validity.
b. Construct validity
Construct validity deals with the relationship between the test items and the skill
that is going to be measured.
c. Content validity
Content validity deals with the content of the test itself. A test has content validity
if each number of the test item constitutes a representative sample according to the
sub skill that is going to be measured.
d. Criterion-related validity
There are two kinds of criterion-related validity. The first is concurrent validity; a
test has concurrent validity if its result refers to another test result that has been
valid. The second is called by predictive validity; it concerns to a test which can
predict the candidates future performance.

THE STEPS IN COSTRUCTING THE TEST

1. Deciding the sub skill(s)
Deciding the sub skill is the first and the most important phase in constructing a test.
It relates with the validity. The teacher needs to know about the sub skill(s) that is
going to be tested. The teacher can measure the students ability in comprehending
word meaning, sentence meaning, paragraph meaning and the whole text meaning as
well. According to Hughes (1989), there are two kinds of reading comprehension sub
skills. The first is called by macro skills that refer to the general idea of the text.
Students must be able to know about some information from the text, gist and

argument. Then, for the second sub skill is called by micro sub skills. It refers to the
linguistic features of the text. Students must be able to recognize and interpret
referents, word meaning, and discourse indicators.
2. Deciding Test Type
The following test types are usually used by the teacher in testing reading
comprehension to the students, here are the explanations:
i.

Matching tests
Matching tests include word matching and sentence matching, pictures and
sentence matching. It requires the students to be good at comprehending word and
sentence. Matching tests is appropriate to be applied in elementary level.

ii.

True/ False reading tests

True/ False tests is usually used in reading comprehension test. The students are
required to decide a statement with either true or false. This test type has
weaknesses which are it may allow the students to guess the answer and the test
may not discriminate the students ability well. In order to avoid the weaknesses,
the teacher can give a penalty by reducing the point whenever make mistake in
answering the question. The teacher can add another option: e.g. true, false, not
stated.

iii.

Multiple Choice
It is the most common test type in reading comprehension test. Multiple choice
tends to be a kind of vocabulary test, however in reading comprehension, the
students need to comprehend the words meaning before comprehending the text
itself.

iv.

Completion
In completion, the test items measure the students ability in recalling the
information rather than recognizing. In reading comprehension test, it belongs to
objective category of test items. There are two types of completion items in
reading comprehension test;
a) the blanks for completion is separated from the text.
b) the blanks for completion are in the text itself.

3. Selecting Text
When deciding the text type, the first think that needs to be considered is about the
students level, so we have to decide the text based on the structure used and the
vocabulary used. The more complex structure used and vocabulary used, the more
appropriate the text for advanced level. The teacher should consider about the length
of the text as well because comprehending the text itself may take some time. The
teacher needs to be sure enough that the text has not been given to the students before.

4. Drawing Table of Specification

Table of specification relates to content validity. It helps the teacher to distribute the
number of test items proportionally for each test type that has been chosen. For
example:
The teacher is going to measure about word comprehension, sentence
comprehension, paragraph comprehension, and whole text comprehension. The
number of test items is 15.
Table of Specification
Sub Skills

Word Comprehension
Sentence Comprehension
Paragraph Comprehension
Whole Text Comprehension
Total

Number of Test Items

Multiple
True or
Completion
Choices
False
1
1
2
1
2
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
5
5
5

5. Writing Down the Test Items

Before writing down the test items, the first think that becomes the focus is about
identity of the test. The teacher needs to provide some related information about
the test such as the name of school, kind of test, class, semester, theme, text type,
and time allocation.

Next is about the instruction. Each type of test has its own instruction. The
teacher needs to make the instruction as clear as possible in order to make the
students understand about what they have to do in the test.

When writing down the test items, the teacher needs to consider about the
difficulty level of each test items. The test items should be arranged from the
easiest to the most difficult.

6. Writing Down the Key Answer

The last step of constructing test is writing down the key answer. The teacher should
write down the key answer for each type of test in order to make the scoring process
easier.

CONCLUSION
Reading is an essential skill for the students in the classroom in order to gain any
information.

However,

reading

without

comprehension

is

meaningless.

Reading

comprehension can be defined as the activity of comprehending about what is being read. In
language test, reading comprehension test is the most familiar in measuring the students
ability. Before constructing the test, the teacher needs to think deeply about validity. Without
validity, the test result will be bias because validity deals with accuracy. A valid test is a test
which measures what is intended to measure. The teacher should consider first about what
sub skill(s) that is going to be tested. The next step is deciding types of test and the text used.
Then, the teacher has to draw table of specification and the last step is writing down the test
items and providing the key answer as well.

REFERENCES
Heaton, J.B. 1991. Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers: Writing English Language
Tests New Edition. New York: Longman Group (FE) Ltd.
Hughes, Arthur. 2003. Testing for Language Teachers Second Edition. Cambridge University
Press.
Madsen, Harold. S. 1983. Techniques in Testing. Oxford University Press.
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/collegeartslaw/cels/essays/testing/THintonTesting.pdf (being accessed on June, 15th 2015)