剑桥通用英语第一级考试、初中托福考试阅读语篇比较及其对我国中考英语选材的启示——以2020年试题为例

Comparison of Reading Texts in Cambridge General English Test (A2 Key for Schools) and TOEFL Junior and Its Enlightenment to China’s Senior High School Entrance Examination for English Material Selection——Taking the Test Questions in 2020 as an Example

通过文本分析工具Coh-metrix 3.0获取的数据显示,剑桥通用英语第一级考试(青少版)、初中托福考试具有共同的语篇变量特征,即句子长度与结构多样化、兼顾词汇密度与篇章衔接、用词义具象性降低主题难度等。鉴于我国中国英语与这两项国际性考试在CEFR语言能力等级要求上对等,它们的共同语篇特征启示中考英语命题在对阅读材料进行选择和改编时,可以使用Coh-metrix等文本分析工具更好地把握难度和可读性,进行科学选材,以期对阅读教学起到正向反拨作用。

With the data from Coh-metrix 3.0, a computational tool that produces indices of the linguistic and discourse representations of a text, it is found that the texts from A2 Key for Schools and TOEFL Junior have some features in common, such as a diversity in sentence length and structure, a balance between lexical density and discourse cohesion, and more concrete words to reduce the difficulty of the topic. As the difficulty of A2 Key for Schools and TOEFL Junior is somewhat equivalent to China’s senior high school entrance examination according to CEFR, the text analysis tool including Coh-metrix can be used to help standardize the text selection and adaptation in the entrance exam. In this way, the test can have a positive effect on reading teaching.