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Answering the New SAT Reading Comprehension Questions Without the Passages
Author(s) -
Powers Donald E.,
Leung Susan Wilson
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of educational measurement
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.917
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1745-3984
pISSN - 0022-0655
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1995.tb00458.x
Subject(s) - reading comprehension , reading (process) , comprehension , mathematics education , psychology , computer science , natural language processing , linguistics , programming language , philosophy
It has been reasonably well established that test takers can, to varying degrees, answer some reading comprehension questions without reading the passages on which the questions are based, even for carefully constructed measures like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). The aim of this study was to determine what test‐taking strategies examinees use, and which are related to test performance, when reading passages are not available. The research focused on reading comprehension questions similar to those that will be used in the revised SAT, to be introduced in 1994. The most often cited strategies involved choosing answers on the basis of consistency with other questions and reconstructing the main theme of a missing passage from all of the questions and answers in a set. These strategies were more likely to result in successful performance on individual test items than were any of many other possible (and less constructrelevant) strategies.