The Derivation, Reporting And Interpretation Of Language Test Scores With Some Recommendations For The TEM

Test for English Majors (TEM) is a large scale language testing program at the national level in the People's Republic of China. It is for full time undergraduate students in Mainland China who major either in English language and literature, English language teaching and other related fields of which the learning of English takes up the lion's share of their academic activity. The program consists of two levels of tests: TEM 4 and TEM 8. As the result of the test has already gained wide social recognition and acquired great social value, it has become, in effect, a high stake external examination on comprehensive performance in English. Despite this, TEM has been using the raw score for both score composition and reporting. Owing to its simplicity, the raw score is usually employed by school teachers for school based examinations. As a result, the TEM score is restricted in both inter-form comparability and intra-form interpretability. In order to further improve the validity of score interpretation and the usability of the test result, and to capitalize on the use value of the test result, we have made an attempt to offer some tentative recommendations for the TEM program with respect to the derivation, reporting and interpretation of test scores. Our general guideline is: As a public testing program, TEM is a program of the people. Therefore, it should be under the inspection of the people so that it will provide the people with more and better services. Our recommendations are at two levels: the general level and the technical level. At the former level, recommendations are for policy makers or policy making organizations; at the latter level, recommendations are for the TEM technical staff.At the general level, altogether six recommendations have been made, including (1) the intentions or purposes of TEM 4 and TEM 8, (2) their respective dimensionality and testing methods, (3) the what of score reporting, (4) the issuing of TEM certificates, (5) the training of score interpreters and (6) the building of a website for TEM.At the technical level, three sets of recommendations have been made, including (1) the choice of score scales, (2) the reporting of test result, and (3) the interpretation of test scores.