A Study on Testing Reading Comprehension : A Place of Subjective and Objective Tests

Abstract

The present study was carried out to find out the place of subjective and objective tests in testing reading comprehension. For this purpose, one hundred twenty students of class ten studying in different secondary schools in Surkhet District were selected. Out of them, sixty students were taken from the four public secondary schools, fifteen from each school and sixty from the four private secondary schools, fifteen from each, through the stratified random sampling procedure. The piloted test - items were the tools of collecting primary data. It is a kind of cross-sectional study. After conducting the test in the selected schools, the raw scores were tabulated and presented for further analysis through the simple statistical tools, like, percentage and mean (average). They were further interpreted through tables as per the set objective of the study. The findings of the study have shown that the average performance of the students in objective test in both types of reading texts viz. seen as well as unseen texts was better than that of the subjective test as a whole. Similarly, the students of private schools have shown better performance in both tests, in both kinds of reading texts, than the students of public schools. This thesis consists of altogether four chapters. Chapter one introduces the study with its general background i.e. teaching and testing, testing of language skills, reading and reading comprehension, subjective and objective test, testing reading comprehension, review of related literature, objectives of the study, significance of the study. Similarly, chapter two deals with the methodology of the study. It comprises of sources of data, population of the study, tools and process of data collection and limitations of the study. Chapter three deals with the analysis and interpretation of the data using different tables, percentage followed with description as well. Chapter four consists of summary, findings and pedagogical implications of the study. Eventually, references and appendices are given. The appendix section includes research tools and other information.