Genres of Reading Comprehension Passages in Chinese Mainland National Matriculation English Test (NMET): A Systematic Analysis of the Last Twenty Years (2004–2023)

Dong Wang and Zhexi Ye

SAGE Open, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, 21582440251323524

Abstract: Reading comprehension constitutes an important part of the Chinese National Matriculation English Test (NMET) which influences English teaching practice greatly. Despite the focus of many studies on NMET reforms, content validity, and washback effects, there remains a notable gap in research regarding the genre of reading texts in NMET. Drawing on the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) notion of micro-genres, this study analyzes the micro-genres of the reading passages ( n = 240) tested in Chinese NMET from 2004 to 2023. It reveals that these passages cover a wide range of micro-genres. However, the genre distribution is imbalanced with stories leading a dominating role while arguments, text responses and compositional reports get less attention. To improve reading comprehension tasks designed in NMET, the study calls for a more balanced distribution and diverse genres in test propositions and sheds light on the teaching practices reforms in EFL classes.

Keywords: genre analysis; National Matriculation English Test (NMET); reading comprehension; English curriculum; pedagogical implications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440251323524 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:1:p:21582440251323524

DOI: 10.1177/21582440251323524

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().