L2 Reading Comprehension Test: Does the Language of Presenting the Items Affect Testees' Test Performance?

Test method facet has been considered as an important factor affecting the testee's performance on a test. that is, a test used to assess a particular ability would yield different results when different test methods are used to gauge the same trait. the language of presentation is an aspect of test method conceived of as affecting the performance of the testees on a language test. this study investigated whether presenting the items of an english reading comprehension test in the testees' native language (persian) would affect their performance on the test. to this end, two versions of an english reading comprehension test--one with items in english (erc) and the other with items in persian (trc)--along with a persian reading comprehension test (prc) were given to 193 english majors with different l2 proficiency levels--high, intermediate, and low--so that half of the subjects, as a whole and in each proficiency level, took erc and the other half, trc. besides, all the subjects took prc, too. the results indicated that the test method, on the whole, did not significantly affect the scores. however, the test method was found to affect the performance of low-proficiency subjects. that is, the lowproficiencygroup taking trc outperformed the corresponding group taking erc.