On The Effect Of Item Design Upon The Reliability Of College English Listening Test

Listening ability is an important part for estimating language learners'language competence, which is very evident in the process of language teaching, especially the listening teaching. However, the assessment of listening ability is difficult and abstract. In terms of test content, test method, the assessment of listening ability is diverse to a great extent from other assessment of abilities such as reading, writing, and translating. Due to this uniqueness, much attention should be given when the teachers are designing and evaluating a listening test.This study aims at researching on three questions:1) How can item design mediate the difficulty level of a listening test? 2) Can item design affect test results' reliability via the variation of item design? Based on the theory of test usefulness of Bachman and Palmer's, the research was carried out by the author during the first semester of 2009 and 2010 with the subjects of 115 non-English major freshmen. These students were tested for two times. One was the listening part of CET-4, and the other one was changed a little in item design, that is, the compound dictation was made up of ten blanks for words only.This thesis consists of six chapters. In the introduction part, the relationship between language testing and language teaching and learning is elaborated in details, and the author also presents the readers with the significance of the research which is to be conducted by the author. The second chapter is mainly about the literature review, including language test development, reliability, and the features of listening tests. Chapter three is mainly concerned with the research design. In chapter four, the author will analyze the data statistically. In chapter five, there will be the evaluation and recommendations of the test results. Finally, the author draws a conclusion.The main findings of this study include:1) The difficulty level of test can affect the reliability of test results in listening test.2) Appropriate difficulty level is propitious for test results'reliability.3) Different item designs can affect the test difficulty level so as to improve test reliability. This research makes a contribution to the analysis of the current state of college English listening test to some extent, and also has a positive effect on the appropriate choice of item design for listening tests.