HAYEF: Journal of Education
Research Articles

MACRO-STRUCTURE ANALYSIS OF READING COMPREHENSION PARAGRAPHS OF KPDS AND YDS EXAMS WITHIN YEARS 2003-2013

1.

İstanbul University, Hasan Ali Yücel Education Faculty, İstanbul- Turkey

HAYEF: Journal of Education 2015; 12: 219-233
Read: 4738 Downloads: 1088 Published: 31 October 2019

YDS, formerly known as KPDS, is a standardized multiple-choice exam used to assess the foreign language proficiency of state employees and academics in Turkey. Given its high-stakes nature in general and the particular significance of the assessment of reading skills within the test, the selection and use of appropriate and well-structured texts for the reading comprehension questions becomes acutely salient. Against this backdrop, this study analyzes the reading texts of KPDS and YDS tests between the years 2003 and 2013 in terms of their macro-structures with a particular focus on the existence of identifying macro-structures, the number and variety of macro-structures and text difficulty in relation to the difficulty of macrostructures. The findings reveal that about half of the reading texts do not have any identifying macro structure while the other half is centered on one of the four main macro-structures, which has significant implications not only for text difficulty but also for the appropriateness of texts for the accurate assessment of reading skills.

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EISSN 2602-4829