ENLACE: A Real Alternative for the Evaluation of Reading Comprehension?

Abstract

Two years ago ENLACE test was stablished as the official instrument and point of reference for the evaluation of competences in Reading comprehension and Mathematics, and also in the knowledge related to other disciplines (history, sciences, etc.) At the beginning of 2014, the perspective changed when “the test was put off due to so many errors and inadequacies in its application, and also due to assumed corruption acts related to handling and publishing its results (Bakhoff Escudero, 2014).  In order to provide more clarity in the reach of the test, we analyzed the underlying contents of questions and reading models used. With this objective in mind, four groups of university students were asked to answer a set of reading comprehension equivalent to the test of preparatory school in 2010, in order to prove its suitability in determining aptitude and level of comprehension of the person who does the test. We were able to confirm that some errors on which students may incur, depend not on their reading ability but on several other factors: design of the test itself, conditions of application, vagueness of questions and/or model answers provided to readers. All this is motivated by a very limited concept of what is covered by the phenomenon of discursive comprehension