A Comparative Analysis of Reading Comprehension Tests of Iranian Universities’ Entrance Examinations (UEE)

The purpose of this study was to investigate and evaluate the reading comprehension section of Iranian UEEs from 2004 to 2013. So the corpus of the current study included the reading passages of all groups (Math and physics, Natural science, Humanities, and Art) and tried to evaluate and compare the following items of the passages: text domain, test rubric (instruction), number of sentences, types of sentences, and types of reading comprehension questions. After collecting data, the findings of the study were outlined based on two methods: qualitative and quantitative. After running SPSS software, the statistical results revealed that the compatibility and the relationships among the variables in test rubric and test format used in the passages were significant, whereas the other variables of the current study such as test domain, number of reading questions, types of sentences, and types of reading comprehension questions did not follow the significant compatibility; moreover, on the basis of Flesch Reading Ease formula the results indicated that the most frequent passages were in plain English and fairly difficult levels with 33.33 percent. It must be added that just 11.66 percent of the passages were in difficult level, and 13.33 percent of the Iranian UEEs reading passages were in fairly easy level. It is worth mentioning that there were no places for very easy and very difficult levels of readability among the passages; ultimately, by evaluating eleven items of reading comprehension tests on the basis of Cronbach’s alpha, the results showed that the comprehension tests were reliable and valid.