Individually, both components have test reliabilities above .85. The reading comprehension portion of the test was designed to measure students' understanding of plot, character, and topic in the contexts of short stories, anecdotes, letters, and brief dialogues. The reading passages consist of complete texts drawn from authentic sources. Editing was done primarily to shorten texts that were felt to be unnecessarily long for purposes of a placement test. Questions were created to encourage quick thinking and intelligent guessing.
Some questions require students to understand factual information.
Other questions require students to skim and scan for general ideas, understand logical development of ideas and sequential ordering of events, make inferences and deductions, and also to interpret point of view and tone. These are felt to be the kinds of skills that students will need to perform well in university-level German courses. Because the scope of the reading test is so broad and the items so varied, it is difficult to select texts to represent the entire test. The following samples may be helpful to you in explaining the Reading Module of the German Placement Test. Nachdem sie nun 76 H te anprobiert hatte, fand sie endlich den richtigen.