Development and Evaluation of a Reading Comprehension Achievement Test to Assess Iranian EFL Learners’ Text Organization Knowledge

The present study was an attempt to develop and evaluate an achievement test to assess Iranian EFL Learners’ text organization knowledge. To this end, a mixture of the model of usefulness proposed by Bachman and Palmer (1996) and the techniques for assessing reliability and validity of criterionreferenced tests offered by Brown and Hudson (2002) employed as the framework of the study. The evidence to examine the construct validity of the developed test gathered through the differentialgroups design, which involves selecting a sample with two mastery and non-mastery groups. To calculate the reliability of the developed test, two coefficients of agreement (ρo) and Kappa (к) computed following the appropriate way Brown and Hudson have offered. The results demonstrate that the developed achievement test is a useful measure to assess the Iranian EFL learners’ pertinent knowledge. Implications of the present findings and suggestions for further research are discussed as well.

Keywords:

Achievement test , Iranian EFL learners , text organization knowledge , Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) framework , criterion-referenced tests , differential-groups design