New design and analysis of CET 4
Abstract
College English language test is an important way to evaluate and detect the effect of college English teaching and learning. It can not only to know about the teaching effects of teachers but also the students’ learning. By the design of different kinds of test questions, the college English tests can take its effect. This paper introduces the design principles and requirements of the tests and summarizes the design features of various types of test questions. Then the author designed a new CET 4 and analyzed the design by experiment. Fifty non English major college students were involved in the experiment and bad on the data, this paper analyzes the reliability and validity of the new CET 4 design. The purpo is to help teachers sum up the test, to minimize the effects of measurement error and to maximize the effects of the language abilities teachers want to measure when designing or developing tests.
Key words: language test, CET 4, design, reliability, validity
1. Introduction
Language testing is an important aspect of applied linguistics. In order to asss the effect of teaching and learning accurately and objectively from the tests, it requires the testing designer to design effectively and scientifically bad on validity and reliability. However，most teachers are more interested in the scores of the tests and often neglect their reliability and validity, and that is not good to improve the test quality. In this n, the author designed a new CET 4 and analyzed the reliability and validity of the test bad on the test scores. This rearch ud the data to analyze the reliability and validity of the new test. It is suppod that the description of the process in which the test is designed, operated and evaluated can give some implications of developing College English tests.
2. Language test
2.1 types of language test
There is some confusion regarding the terminology ud to denote the different types of language tests st test specialists agree on the following broad divisions: achievement/attainment tests, proficiency tests, aptitude tests and diagnostic tests.achievement tests can be further subdivided into class progress tests and achievement tests.
The progress test is designed to measure the extent to which the students have mastered the material taught in the classroom. It is just as important as an asssment of the teacher’s own work as the student’s own learning. Achievement tests, though similar in a number of ways to progress tests, are far more formal tests and are intended to measure achievement on a larger scale. The final exams of many schools and public tests which are intended to show mastery of a particular syllabus such as CET-4 , CET-6, graduation exams and college entrance exams belong to this type.
Proficiency test looks forward, defining a student’s language proficiency with reference to a particular task which he or she will be required to perform. Proficiency tests are in no
way related to any syllabus or teaching programme. TOEFL, IELTS and EPT are belong to this type.
Aptitude tests are designed to measure the student’s probable performance in a foreign language which he or she has not started to learn: i.e. It asss aptitude for learning a language.
Diagnostic tests are to find out the gap between the students’ practical application ability and the target of the curriculum. So that the teaching can be a test for the students’ needs. Diagnostic tests are commonly ud at the beginning of cours and at the middle of the mester teaching for periodic testing. Diagnostic tests are always called quizzes or unit tests in shool education.
2.2criteria of tests
There are three criteria for tests: validity, reliability and discrimination.
Briefly, the validity of a test is the extent to which it measures what it is suppod to mea
sure and nothing el. Validity can be further divided into face validity, content validity, construct validity and empirical validity. If a test item looks right to other testers, teachers, moderators, and testees, it can be described as having at least face validity. Content validity depends on a careful analysis of the language being tested and of the particular cour objectives. If a test has construct validity, it is capable of measuring certain specific characteristics in accordance with a theory of language behaviour and learning. Empirical validity is obtained as a result of comparing the results of the test with the results of some criterion measure.
