Standardizing Classroom-based Testing In Chinese College English Teaching

Classroom-based college English testing is closely related to college English teaching. It is an effective method in evaluating the college English teaching quality. Meanwhile it can provide positive backwash on stimulating college English teaching.The classroom-based testing chiefly belongs to achievement test, which is based directly on a detailed teaching syllabus on books and materials used and should reflect the particular approaches to learning and teaching that have been adopted. It is designed to measure the extent to which the students have mastered the materials in the classroom. The small classroom test, mid-term test, end-of-term test all belong to this kind of test.Standardizing the testing refers to whether the test manufacturing, the implementation of the test and the test design, including the determination of the test purpose and test type, test contents and items, is under strict control, and to ensure that the test is able to provide positive backwash to teaching and learning.However, the significance of classroom-based college English testing is not recognized adequately in China. Firstly, the relative researches on classroom-based college English testing is few. As the researchers and experts concerned have attached great importance to the study of CET-4 and CET-6, classroom-based college English testing which has intimate relationship with college English learning has been neglected. Secondly, through researches via questionnaire as well as consultation of lots of materials concerned, the author has discovered that many college English teachers scarcely possess enough understandings to classroom-based college English testing. Though, some of them are clear about the distinctions between CET and classroom-based college English testing, they have not realized enough the importance of classroom-based college English testing to college English teaching. Some even insist that classroom-based college English testing serves for national CET-4 and CET-6. Consequently, the positive backwash function of classroom-based college English testing cannot be applied in college English teaching sufficiently. Though some traditional classroom-based testing methods, such like quiz, are generally adopted, the interactive and flexible classroom-based evaluation methods, like group discussion and report, and interviews are merely adopted by teachers. Otherwise, the test design, especially of the term test paper, is seriously affected by CET-4 and CET-6, in which the number of objective items is far more than that of subjective items. Adopting a large quantity of objective items could keep the reliability of a test paper and lighten thescoring pressure, however, as to the classroom-based college English testing, an achievement test, it cannot ensure the test validity—the testing content is what is intended to be tested. Therefore, the problem of standardizing the classroom-based college English testing is presented to us.Through a detailed study on the questionnaire to the college English teachers for undergraduates of non-English majors, and the validity analysis of the Jan, 2005 college English term test paper in WHUT, the author intends to inquire into the problems existed in classroom-based college English testing, from the perspectives like the implementation state of classroom-based college English testing in college English teaching, and the design of term test paper, and to provide rational and suitable suggestions for the standardizing of classroom-based college English testing.