The Psc Papers Monosyllabic Word Test Question Structure Analysis

Putonghua Shuiping Cesh(iPSC ,Putonghua proficiency test)is a standard reference test .It is the only national ability test organized by the government ,and its unified standard is also formulated by the government .PSC measures the candidates'correctness and proficiency in Putonghua and issues the candidates relevant certificates.Since 1994 ,PSC has put into effect ,many scholars have researched in this field ,and got a lot of achievements .However ,the research that is about the structure of the test paper of PSC is limited ,especially the research about the structure of Part One"Pronouncing 100 monosyllabic words"of the test paper.My thesis will try to illustrate that Part One of the test paper of PSC is unreasonable through the investigation and analysis. It has also inspected the efficiency of this part.Through the investigation ,we have found that PSC has two problems which are related to the Part One .First ,certain candidates do well in Part One ,but do not as well as Part One in other parts, even more ,some of them do quite poor in Part Four"the Topic". Second, we classified the 100 monosyllabic words in Part One in terms of the initials, finals and tones. .We find that some phonetic elements in Putonghua are those which a number of candidates are likely to pronounce wrong ,such as'c','ueng','er'and the rising tone ;however some phonetic elements are those which most candidates are not likely to pronounce wrong ,such as'b','t','a'and so on .Because of those, we confirm that the structure of the Part One may have problems, and it is necessary to do deep research to find out what exactly the problems are.We take the means of sociolinguistics ,and pick 300 out of 683 sound recordings ,which are from the PSC examination site in the Capital Normal University .Then we retest the 300 candidates'recordings ,write down everyone's scores of each part .Particularly ,we record their mistakes of Part One in detail .Besides ,we analyze 8 papers which are used in the test by the 300 candidates ,and sort the elements respectively in terms of the initials ,finals and tones.After got all the basic data ,we analyze them statistically ,we use the Office-Excel to calculate the Pearson Correlation Coefficient between the lost scores in the Part One and the ones in the phonetic part of the Part Four ,the correlative coefficients is 0.68 .This figure means the correlation between the two is not high enough ,since as we have all known Part Four can show the common PSC levels of the candidates .So we can say that the efficiency of the Part One is not high enough in investigating the candidates'Putonghua levels .We analyze the error rates of all the phonetic elements of the Part One ,arrayed them from the lowest to the highest in terms of the initials ,finals and tones ,then compared the order with the one of the phonetic elements shown in the papers .We found the two orders are not coherent ,which means that some elements which are likely to be pronounced wrong are not shown enough in the papers ;however ,some elements which are not likely to be pronounced wrong are shown too much .The conclusion is that there are problems in the structure of the Part One .We have also found out the causes .Scholars haven't considered enough about whether the monosyllabic words are in the frequent used vocabulary; Besides, they seek a seeming excessively balance in the paper, making all the elements show in a basically comparative proportion .Our investigation have proved they are improper.When the monosyllabic words are chosen, what should be considered firstly is whether these words are pronounced correctly; the second thing is whether they are in the frequent used vocabulary; after those two, the others include whether the initials, finals and tones can match each other.In this basis, we have worked out a new distribution of the phonetic elements of the Part One, and then we try to draw up a new"Part One"for reference.Limited by the various kinds of factors ,our investigation are not far-ranging ,we could get more reasonable result if we got more specimens .Among others ,our"Part One"for reference is just a tentative plan ,whether it is available should be determined after it is tested among candidates .