Application of a Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment to Analysis English Comprehension's Items of Master's Degree

The purpose of this study was to determine the basic skills of reading and comprehension and analyze the test questions, and finally, strengths and weaknesses of subjects through cognitive diagnostic assessment models were fitted with retrofit analysis. The data examined in this study included responses from 3,000 participants in the graduate entrance examination for English language field, which were selected from among 16044 people randomly. At first, with the help of experts, a matrix Q, consisting of the relationship between 20 questions of reading test with 7 basic skills was formed and then, using the G-DINA model, last analysis was performed. Finally, using a posteriori expected method within the framework of the G-DINA model, probability of domination of every single person on each skill was calculated by CDM package skills in software R, and by determining the cut-off point 0.6 for dominance, investigated participants in each skill, divided into two dominant and non-dominant groups. The results showed that in each of the skills, most people have not reached to dominance, Although the situation in the SUM skill (Analyzing and evaluating the relative importance of the information contained in the text, by differentiating between the main idea and details) was better than other skills, and about half of those got dominant in the skill. The final result suggests that, in general, the participant's situation in the application of cognitive strategies to achieve the correct answer is unsatisfactory and these strategies must be included in the curriculum of reading skills and comprehension.