Diy: Designing a reading test as reliable as a Paper-Based TOEFL designed by ETS

Abstract

Designing a reliable reading test has been proven very difficult and following test design steps is time-consuming; however, it is very significant both for teachers and test centers. Therefore, this research was aimed at proposing an alternative, time-saving method of designing a reading test to measure EFL student proficiency. The method proposed was to use a standardized test as a template both for texts and question types. Toprovethat this method was effective, a reading testwas designed by using the method and tested for its reliability level, and compared to the reliability of reading test in PBT TOEFL. The results suggested that the testwas highly reliable (85%), very close to the reliability level of the PBT TOEFL designed by ETS (86%). In addition, the scores obtained were significantly correlated with the scores achieved in an ETS-designed test (91%). Therefore, it is recommended that test makers follow the procedure of designing a reading test by using standardized test such as PBT TOEFL as the template in developing a reliable test, thus reliability test and revision process can both be bypassed.