The Improvement of CET4 Test

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Abstract. College English Test Band IV has aroused argument among students and English teachers， especially about its validity and reliability. The key problem of CET4 lies in that it lack of validity and its shortcoming results in some negative influence on language teaching. In order to improve the positive backwash of CET4， we must first make clearly six questions concerning validity of test. At the same time we should consider other factors when we reform the CET4.

Key words： validity；test；language teaching； CET4

I. Introduction

The nationwide English test， namely China College English Test， Band 4（CET4） for non-English majors， is so important to Chinese undergraduate students that they have become a part of their life at university and in some universities students even can not get graduation diplomas without passing the CET4. In China， the full-time undergraduate students have to finish an obligatory English course named College English band 1，2，3 and band 4 continuously for two years before they can take part in the CET4. Each year there are about two million test-takers for CET4. Nowadays， the certificate of CET4 has been considered as a basic prerequisite of employment. So not only college students but also people outside campus are keen on this test. On the other hand， voices against this test are also very loud. Some companies have found that those employees who have already had passed CET4 couldn’t speak any English， nor write any. Some linguists and language teachers also argue that as CET4 can’t measure English proficiency efficiently， and that it does more to hinder education of the language than to promote it， it should be banned.

II. The problems of CET4 in China

1. Negative influence of CET4

This Chinese type of nationwide College English assessment is motivated by the desire to determine what the undergraduate students have learned from the course of “College English”. Therefore， CET4 is also intended in a sense for the assessment of the English instructional quality in China’s universities. While， the fact is that these English testing instruments have produced more and more negative influences on the students learning English as a foreign language， The negative influence of CET4 are found as follows：

1）Quite a number of students focus on CET4 model tests instead of their English text-books in order to pass CET4. As a result， they have made no improvement in their English language ability during English class practice being only familiar with cet4 formats.

2）English language instructors have to spend over 30% of their course-scheduled time guiding students how to perform well on CET4 by instructing them to do lots of test-concerned exercises. As a result， normal course instructions and practice are often put aside. Required teaching tasks are never finished.

3）The university or department administration， instructors’ English teaching arrangement， and students’ learning English as a foreign language， are all CET4 test-driven. This is against the China’s Educational Goal of English Teaching prescribed by the National Educational Commission of China―to train the students to have a basic English communicative ability in listening， speaking， reading and writhing.

4）With an average eight years’ English learning experience， most holders of the CET4 certificates are not capable of communicating well with English speaker. Some holders of CET4 certificates even can neither pronounce daily-used English words correctly nor aptly utilize the six commonly used tenses in English.

2. Reason

We find that CET4， mainly derived from TOEFL， doesn’t help us fully assess what the students have learned or should have learned from their English language courses. This English assessment instrument， consisting of Guided Writing， Fast Reading， Listening Comprehension， Depth Reading， Cloze Test and Translation， is inadequate to provide useful feedback for learners and teachers of English. Those students who work hard on the College English course often fail to perform well on CET4， while those focusing on model tests without following College English course requirements can pass the test easily.

A language test must have validity to ensure that the testing instrument actually measures what it purports to measure. The CET4 test in China as an English language achievement test should measure what the Chinese undergraduate students know or have learned from the nationwide united course “College English” which is claimed to be the largest course in terms of the student numbers in China. Therefore， the validity of CET4 directly determines the usefulness or their intended purposes of such assessment instruments in evaluating students’ English language ability. Although some students can get higher scores in the CET4， which doesn’t mean that they have the higher level of using the language in the communication， it only means that they have the higher level of recognizing the language in the test after a period of exercising. We should know there really exists distinct difference between using language and recognizing language.

The purpose of learning a foreign language for most college students is to make use of the knowledge of the language learnt to communicate with native speakers or others being able to speak this kind of language. Therefore， test should serve this purpose， and then serve language teaching. CET， as one of the most popular language test in China， should follow the principle to become an effective test. The real intention of CET is to evaluate the level of test takers’ mastering English in the real situation. CET must measure what it wants to measure―the ability of using language in the communication， we can say that it reaches its validity. However， the present CET doesn’t work very well in this factor， which has been proved by many facts that the result of the test doesn’t represent the comprehensive level and ability of using language. Many students got high scores in CET while in reality they can’t freely utilize English to reach the goal of communication， even some students with high scores don’t dare to open mouth before foreigners. From this we should say CET somewhat lack of validity.

III. How to strengthen the validity and reliability of CET4

Validity and reliability， we know， are two major considerations in designing a test. Validity refers to the extent to which a test measures what it intends to （Hughes， 1989：22）. The validity of a language test therefore is established by the extent to which it succeeds in providing an accurate concrete representation of an abstract concept. Reliability refers to its “consistency of measurement”， which simply means the agreement between the result of the test and test itself or other tests. An ideal test， whether objective or subjective， should be both reliable and valid. However， it is generally understood that reliability and validity are in constant conflict with each other. “The greater the reliability of a test， the less validity it usually has” （Heaton， 1988：164）， and vice versa. The problem of the present CET lies in reliable enough while valid inadequate. Obviously tests organizers want to keep the balance between them， but in fact the process of exertion transfers the direction of the real intention.

Realizing that CET4 is not valid enough as English achievement tests， many English professors and test organizers try to find the best way to achieve the balance between valid and reliable to improve CET4. It is believed that reliability is a necessary but not a sufficient quality of a test. Reliability concentrates on the empirical aspects of the measurement process， while validity pays attention to the theoretical aspects and finds out the balance between these concepts with the empirical ones. Before we take some action to reform CET4， we must make clear the following questions concerning the reliability and validity of the test.

1.Purpose： The test for what purpose？ This is the basic factor in designing a test because it determines of other factors. As long as we know the purpose or intention of the test―admission of college， promotion or quantifications of some occupations etc， we should know what kind of abilities of testees well be evaluated.

2.Ability： What language abilities would we like to assess？ Are different skill areas―reading comprehension， listening comprehension， speaking and written expression―evaluated as a whole or separately？ And why are we choosing to measure these language abilities instead of others？ What is our rationale for taking this approach and techniques？

3.Construction： How will we construct and validate our assessment measures？ Assessment measures that are neither reliable nor valid will be of questionable educational value.

4.Time： How often will the language assessment take place？ The frequency of assessment is really quite important in that there is a delicate line between so little assessment that the language learners wonder how they are doing and so much assessment that they wonder when they will just be allowed to learn being assessed.

5.Environment： What are the characteristics of the physical environments in which the language test will take place？ The characteristics of the physical environments have evident effects on administering standardized tests to large groups of respondents.

6.Test taker： Who are our intended respondents？ How might they be described in terms of their personal characteristics？ What is their socio-cultural background？ The respondents’ characteristics and their socio-cultural background may influence their performance on language assessment measures.

If we make clearly the questions above the CET4 test will produces results commensurate with our testing objectives. The test designer should not only understand the effects of individual characteristics on language test performance， but also know the necessity of designing test items specially to cater to Chinese students with certain characteristics.

IV. The improvement of CET4

The reformed CET4 test should really function as a measure that we can interpret as an indicator of Chinese students’ English language ability. Therefore， in the development of an English achievement test with Chinese undergraduate students as test takers should cover positive backwash and characteristics of individuals.

1. Positive backwash

Testing and testing strategies have the following positive backwash on language teaching and learning.

1）Testing and testing strategies have positive backwash on language teaching and learning.

2）By constructing a test and taking a test scientifically， teacher’ teaching and students learning can thus be greatly promoted， no longer to be as blindly as they used to be.

3）By test strategies developing， students can be well armed with language competence， testing strategies and so that they can easily and clearly realize the test points and efficiently deal with the testing items and apply what they learned into practice， thus to enhance their language use ability.

The reformed English achievement test should have evident positive effects on teaching and learning College English as an obligatory course. This test as a means of pushing English teaching and learning in our high education can best be considered to have effects on individual Chinese undergraduate students， China’s high educational system， and Chinese society at large. The impact of testing， or backwash， in the reformed English test may help test developers and test users in China efficiently investigate and review the specific areas of College English Teaching such as content of teaching， teaching methodology， current ways of assessing students’ English achievements. The test takers improved and consolidate their English language knowledge from the College English course either while taking the test or from the feedback received.

Meanwhile， impact on instruction， as implemented by classroom teachers， becomes positive backwash beneficial to those teachers teaching the College English course instead of spending class time teaching the test. The current English test is often incompatible with the language teachers’ values and goals of the instructional program. The teachers should feel that what they teach according to textbooks is exactly relevant to the test and how we choose for testing satisfies both teachers and students so that the characteristics of the reformed CET4 test and test tasks correspond more closely to the characteristics of the college English instructional program.

2. Characteristics of individuals should be considered

The four sets of individual characteristics understood to affect language test performance are also considered in our way of designing， developing and using the reformed CET4 test. One obvious personal characteristic of Chinese undergraduate students in comparison with those of North American students is that they are rather conservative in expressing their ideas in class. They refrain from speaking English or joining in an English conversation actively in class， resulting in their low English speaking ability up to the CET4 test even though they have learnt English for eight years.

The current CET4 has no items or subtests for inducing the students to improve their English speaking ability. Therefore， a new item or subtest for assessing students’ English speaking ability should be designed on the basis of reading passages in College English textbooks. Both teachers and students of this course are spurred on to better performance on English speaking item.

Another individual characteristic of CET4 test takers is the test takers’ topical knowledge. A test task that requires a test taker to relate the topical content of the test input to his own topical knowledge is likely to be more interactive than one that does not.

The topical knowledge that Chinese undergraduate students are familiar with provides the information base that enables English use with reference to their lives. The test task that presupposes cultural or topical knowledge on the part of Chinese test takers is more interesting and familiar to those Chinese students.

A writing task that requires a great deal of information specific to Christianity might be extremely difficult for Chinese undergraduate students who possess very little western religious knowledge， no matter how good the Chinese students’ writing skills are. Therefore， the reformed CET4 should basically follow the Chinese students’ knowledge structures in long memory.

For a long time， people have talked about the difference between receptive skill and productive skill. If we go further to divide the language abilities into listening， reading， speaking and writing， then listening and reading are receptive skills while speaking and writing are productive skills. Test design of CET4 should pay more attention to the productive skills； these skills should occupy a large part in the whole paper. In the English tests assessing a foreign speaking ability of students in China， the assessment of English speaking ability should be given larger proportion instead of the zero proportion in the present CET4. In recent years， testees who score more than 80 in CET4 can be registered for the related oral test. As this threshold is high， only a small number of testees can have such a chance. Since it is a separate test from the written one， and concerning only small numbers of tests， it is unlikely to solve the problem completely. Most Chinese students need a greater incentive to improve their English speaking ability.

V. Conclusion

Basic theoretical knowledge of language testing is the first step to the relevant research on evaluating the reliability， validity of a language test， as well as on designing and developing a language test for specific purposes. In the design and development of the new CET4 for assessing Chinese undergraduates’ English language ability， the special factors arising from the characteristics of Chinese students of English should be given fairly enough consideration. My research on a suitable framework of CET4 is correspondent with the desire of those English test developers in relevant authorities for the improvement of the current problematic CET4.

Reference

[1]Heaton， J. B. 1988. Writing English Language Tests. Longman Group UK Ltd.

[2]Hughes， A. 1989. Testing for language teachers. Cambridge： Cambridge University Press.

[3]Davies， A. 1990. Principles of languages testing. Oxford： Basil Blackwell

[4]“National College English Syllabus” Revising Group. 1999. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press