2.3.1 Text Difficulties
A reading text may be easy for some readers but hard for others, depending on the candidate’s familiarity with the text topic, the level of vocabulary in the text and the text length.
Khalifa (1997:124) claims that familiarity with the text topic can be a good predictor of test difficulty. According to Clapham (1996: 133), students’ familiarity with the subject area or topic of a reading passage helps them to answer the comprehension question. That is to say, background knowledge of the content of a reading text enables candidates to perform confidently,