EDU 5266 TESTING AND EVALUATION

ARTICLE: THE KEY TO SUCCESS: ENGLISH LANGUAGE TESTING IN CHINA BY LIYING CHENG
IRENE GERITT SEE GS24931

English test development in China

Major test -College English Test (CET)

-National Matriculation English Test

(NMET)
-Test for English Majors (TEM) -Graduate School Entrance English Examination (GSEEE) -Public English Testing System (PETS) -Cambridge Business English Certificate (BEC) CET and the NMET are the two large high-stakes national tests. CET - a large-scale standardized test administered nationwide by the Nat.College Eng.Committee on behalf of the Higher Edu

Department of the Ministry of Edu in China Aims at measuring the Eng.proficiency of college/university undergraduate students. Test battery-comprised CET-Spoken Eng.Test(CET-SET) Jin(2005)-CET maintained high reliability and validity
NMET University entrance of Eng. For whole the country Purpose: to make inferences about candidates Eng.language ability, which is used in university admission decisions together with the scores from university entrance tests in another 5@6 secondary school subjects. Norm-referenced standardized test with a major function of selecting secondary school graduates for institutions of higher edu.

Issues in Language Testing within Chinese Context

There are 3 areas:

- test validity - testing of speaking - test washback Test validity - The validity of a widely used test format in China-MCQ. - Adopt large numbers of MCQ in order to save time & manpower that would otherwise be involved in grading the test powers. - Wang (1996) conducted a comparative study of MCQ & true-false questions to evaluate the effectiveness of the latter as test format.

- The efficiency of true false was greater than MC tests. - However, both the reliability & discrimination indices of

the true-false test were lower than those of the MC tests. - To conclude, true false test format can be used in classroom assessment.

Testing Speaking - The development of oral testing started in the 1990s in China. - NMET & CET are formally the testing speaking, - Li & Wang (2000) reported on the development of the NMET-oral subtest. - Many limitations including the huge size of the test candidature & the rigid limitation of human & time resources in China. - The validity of the NMETOS format was asserted on the strength of its being-based test of spoken interaction achieving a balance between control & spontaneity in the required spoken output, a union of the analytical & the holistic approach to rating, & combination of the singleexaminer method in test administration & a doublemarking method for scoring.

- NMETOS is not just a test that suits the conditions & meets the needs of China. - In the wider context of language testing,it can claim to be a successful in mass-scale oral testing. - He & Dai (2006) conducted a corpus-based investigation into the validity of the CET-SET. - Examined the degree of interaction among candidates in the group discussion task with respect to a set of interactional language functions(ILFs) to be assessed. - It showed a low degree of interaction among candidates in the task. - Suggest that the inadequate elicitation of ILFs from the candidates may well pose a problem for measuring their speaking ability in terms of the ability to engage in communicative interaction.

Test Washback - Qi (2003) investigated the intended washback of the NMET. - NMET failed to bring about the intended changes or wash back effects on the teaching & learning of Eng. in secondary school. - 2 major function: * the selection functions * the function of promoting change - NMET has achieved very limited intended wash back & the test is an inefficient tool for bringing about the pedagogical changes in schools in China. Wash back effects of CET-SET - Took the test to have their communicative competence in Eng.evaluated.

- It was important to have an oral test in the CET-SET battery. - SET have a huge impact on college Eng.teaching & would in promote students ability to use Eng.communicatively. - Since the administration of the CET-SET, positive changes have taken place in college Eng.teaching. - For example, many colleges & universities began to pay more attention to improving students communicative competence; students became more involved in the oral activities in class; and some universities even developed teaching materials that catered to the test.

Conclusion
The relatively new development of Eng.testing in China-

NMET & CET has provided unique challenges to English language education in China. The Chinese society in general accepts the function of testing as a fair indicator of students academic success. The impact of the 2 national tests- the NMET & CET-is in particular evident on the teaching & learning of English in China and has been much debated.