An Exploratory Study Into The Construct Validity Of The Listening Comprehension Test Of CET-4

The thesis reports on a study which explores the construct validity of the Listening Comprehension test of CET-4 with the triangulation approach and the combined research method of questionnaire and immediate retrospection. This study focuses on the categories of strategies subjects employed during the test, the content validity of the test, the test performances, and the relationships among them. The subjects are college students from Zhejiang University and City College of Zhejiang University, who took CET-4, December, 2006. Data are collected by accomplishing questionnaire, the LC test paper, and immediate retrospection procedure. Findings indicate that the construct validity of the LC test is threatened by excessive use of test-wiseness strategies, the unsatisfactory distribution of question tasks of different types, and the subtle difference of strategy use when subjects are performing these question tasks. The findings may provide some insights to bring more useful researches so that language testing can play a more satisfactory role and language teaching will be more effective.