A Comparative Study On Reading Comprehension Test Between CET6 And IELTS

Under the background of globalization,China has gradually realized the importance of English as a world language after the reform and opening up.In order to accelerate the progress integrating with the world across spectrum,the Ministry of Education requires the Examination Center of the Ministry of Education to host and implement College English Test 6(CET6)from 1989,so as to improve students’ English ability in higher education internationalization.With the increase of international population exchange,in the same year,the British Cultural Association,the Cambridge University Education Committee and the IDP Education Australia jointly held the International English Language Testing System(IELTS).However,after 30 years of development,CET6,as a representative large-scale language proficiency test in China,compared with IELTS,has less international influence.In order to improve the international acceptance of CET6,this thesis compares the reading comprehension of CET6 and IELTS,of which purpose is to promote the match between CET6 and international English tests.Since reading is an important means to grasp language knowledge,acquire information and improve language application ability(Ni,2009),reading comprehension is an indispensable part of language testing.So reading is chosen as the focus of the test to evaluate the language ability of the students.In order to explore whether the reading comprehension parts of CET6 and IELTS have good content validity,what they can learn from each other,what are the students’ views on the two reading subtests and the influence of them on students,this paper makes a comparative study on the content validity of the reading subtests of CET6 and IELTS from perspective of reading text and question,as well as students’ attitudes towards the two kinds of reading tests.To guarantee the reliability of this thesis,it adopts quantitative research by using computer-aided methods such as Coh-Metrix3.0,SPSS20.0,Microsoft office software to compare the material selection,text readability,question types and testing point of both two reading subtests.In addition,questionnaire survey and literature survey are also used to study the c the students’ views on the two reading tests.According to the study,it reveals: 1.The material selection of both CET6 and IELTS tends to social science,but the selection of IELTS is more balanced than that of CET6.So the scope of selection of CET6 reading texts should be expanded and its fairness should be emphasized.2.There is no significant difference between CET6 reading comprehension test and IELTS reading comprehension in terms of difficulty and score,but the former reading subtest pays more attention to lexical and syntactic competence,while the latter is slightly more difficult than CET6 in terms of actual readability.3.In terms of question type,there are great differences between CET6 and IELTS.The CET6 reading focuses on the objective questions such as MCQ and matching,while the IELTS reading subtest contains various question types,especially focusing on completion which can examine the competence of summary and expression.4.The distribution of testing points in CET6 reading is relatively balanced,with emphasis on implicit comprehension.While,IELTS reading tends to test the ability to find detail information.However,both of them pay little attention to testing on main idea or attitude,and ignore the examination on skimming at the same time.5.Students generally accept the two kinds of tests have a positive impact on learning,but the acceptance of IELTS is higher than that of CET6.Based on the above conclusions,CET6 can be further reformed to improve its own validity and to enhance its international recognition.