Disclosed is a method for communication by a user equipment in a wireless communication system, including receiving configuration information from a base station, performing measurement of a downlink channel based on the configuration information, identifying a channel quality indicator (CQI) table among a plurality of CQI tables including a first CQI table which includes CQI indices related to a 256 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) scheme and a second CQI table which does not include a CQI index related to the 256 QAM scheme, identifying the CQI index in the identified CQI table based on the measurement, and reporting the identified CQI index to the base station, wherein each of the plurality of CQI tables includes CQI indices indicating modulation schemes and code rates, and wherein a 64 QAM scheme with a highest coding rate indicated in the second CQI table is absent in the first CQI table.