A Tentative Study On The Development Of A School-based Oral English Test System For College Students Of Primary English Education

From 2001, English has become a required course in primary schools in china from grade 3 or even grade 1(in some more developed areas like Qingdao). In the new national English curriculum, the overall aim of English language teaching–the overall language ability in primary schools in China are described from the five components: language knowledge, language skills, affect , learning strategies and cultural understanding,the last two of which are very new . This correspondingly poses an adequate change in the English ability of the College students of primary English education (CSPEE, hereafter) in normal schools who are supposed to be primary school English teachers in future.For a primary English teacher, the ability to speak English is the core ability to teach English well (Hu, 2004). Unfortunately, of the four skills, the oral ability of most of the CSPEE is not qualified: Most of them can not speak fluently and many of them even do not acquire a good pronunciation and intonation. Despite the limited teaching hours, an important and neglected reason is that there has been no set of standard and valid oral tests for them. Testing has a great influence on both teaching and learning. Especially in the Chinese context, the students tend to learn what is going to be tested in the exams. The oral test is always up to the course teacher who does not know what aspects need to be tested and usually just gives a score. The function of oral test, therefore, is like a measurement rather than a stimulus.This thesis proposes the tentative idea of developing a set of three school–based oral English tests for the CSPEE in Qingdao Normal School. The author designed three final oral tests for CSPEE with Wen Qiufang'Cross-cultural Communicative Competence Model as the theoretical basis and the oral English ability of a qualified primary English teacher required by the new curriculum as the guidance. In order to evaluate whether the designing is effective, the author implemented 2 final oral tests for the 40 CSPEE Grade 2009 in Qingdao Normal School. Different focuses in different terms are also taken into consideration when designing the test, therefore, there are three different tasks in each term either individual tasks or pair tasks which measures different aspects of the oral ability. During the process, two markers gave the mark to one or two candidates according to the rating scales based on analytic marking or holistic marking system . The average of the two scores is the final score of the candidate.By analyzing the test score and the data from the feedback of the candidates'questionnaire and teachers'interview , it proved that the oral tests are valid and reliable and have positive backwash effect.The thesis covers five chapters. Chapter One reviews the historical development of language briefly and reviews studies on the oral tests abroad and in China.Chapter Two first presents the development of the notion of communicative competence and puts emphasis on Wen Qiufang's Cross–cultural Communicative Competence Model which consists of communicative competence and cross-cultural competence. Relevant theories concerning oral English test are also presented. Chapter Three is the designing of the school-based oral test system for CSPEE from the aspects of test specifications and test operation.Chapter Four Gives a detailed account of the practice of the oral tests and gives a statistical analysis of the results and a detailed description of the performances of the CSPEE in the tests. Questionnaire and interview survey are investigated which prove the validation of the test.Chapter Five is conclusion which states the findings and limitation of the study. Suggestions of further studies are also given.