Translation as a Means of Testing Reading Ability of EFL Students

Abstract

The present study is carried out to determine the relationship between translation ability and such variables as language proficiency and reading ability, identify the reliability and validity of translation tests as reading comprehension measures in relation to other testing methods (in this case multiple-choice), and explore the effects of reading test type and proficiency level on the performance of the participants. To answer the research questions of this study, 114 Iranian EFL students studying different English majors were selected and tested. Concerning the first and the second research questions, correlational analyses were conducted to determine the degree of relationship between the participants’ translation ability and their language proficiency, on the one hand, and the relationship between translation ability and reading ability, on the other hand. The results indicated that language proficiency and reading ability enjoyed the same level of correlation with translation ability, respectively (0.72, 0.71). On the subject of the third research question (reliability of translation reading test), the most common method of estimating inter-rater reliability between raters, the correlation coefficient was used. It was calculated to be (0.79) which can be considered significant. Regarding the research question number four which focused on the question of validity of translation tests, correlation with criterion measure of passage comprehension (multiple-choice) was calculated. The results indicated that there is a significant correlation between the two tests of reading comprehension ability, translation reading test and multiple-choice reading test, (r = 0.62, p < 0.0001).