The Influence Of Language Ability Hypotheses On Cet Construct

The College English Test is one of the most influential English tests in China. In thepast two decades, it has undergone several modifications and reforms. Some studies havediscussed the measures that have been taken to revise CET construct, but few researchconnects the detailed changes in CET construct to the evolution of language abilityhypotheses. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the influence of language abilityhypotheses on CET construct. Since the20th century, many important linguistic schoolshave tried to explain what language ability is, and in the midst of them, the mostinfluential language ability hypotheses include structuralist hypothesis of language ability,Chomsky’s hypothesis of language ability and communicative hypothesis of languageability. The three language ability hypotheses together reflect the theoretical evolution inlanguage testing and influence the practice of language teaching and testing all around theworld.In order to figure out whether and how the development of the language abilityhypotheses exert influence on the reforms of CET construct, descriptive statistics andexploratory factor analysis has been applied. Four CET data samples from Band4andBand6in1990,1997and2009were chosen as the research subjects, with370randomly-selected cases in each test sample. As the results show, changes of CETconstruct echo the theoretical development of the language ability hypotheses. At theemerging time of CET, structuralist hypothesis of language ability was dominant in thedesign of CET. With the development of communicative hypothesis of language ability,CET began to adopt more comprehensive item formats with authentic communicativecontexts. In the last chapter, some suggestions for further studies are also proposed.