Analysis Of Test Authenticity Of CET-SET

With the prevalence of communicative language testing (CLT), therehas been an increasingly growing concern on the authenticity of languagetests. So far, testing researchers and experts haven't arrived at anagreement on the nature of test authenticity. In general, their differentviews can be divided into two categories: the real-life (RL) approach andthe interactional ability (IA) approach. Based on these approaches,Bachman and Palmer split the concept of authenticity into twodimensions: authenticity and interactiveness. More significantly, in recentyears, Spence-Brown has extended previous views into a morecomprehensive four-dimension theory on the basis of the earlier theoriesand empirical studies. After making an initial probe into the nature ofauthenticity, the paper identifies some major factors affecting testauthenticity.Following a theoretical analysis of CLT, the nature of authenticity andthe essential characteristics of spoken language tests, the paper intends toapply these theories to the CET-SET (the Spoken English Test of CollegeEnglish Test), making a general analysis of its authenticity from theperspectives of test task, test method, assessment criteria and itswashback. Furthermore, the paper offers some suggestions forimprovement of its authenticity, which I hope will be of value for thedevelopment of CET-SET in the future.