Empirical Validation Of A University-Based English Proficiency Test

Testing, as a part of English teaching, is a very important procedure, not just because it can be valuable sources of information about the effectiveness of learning and teaching but also because it can improve teaching, and arouse the student's learning interest. Instead, it can also provide negative backwash, and affect the normal teaching. So people are more and more concerned with language testing. However, outside institutional foreign language teaching exists a nationwide English proficiency test, i.e. CET (College English Test), which is playing a predominant role in various areas, affecting English language teaching, interfering with conveyance of academic degrees, misleading society's judgment of graduates'competence and quality, etc. These problems have aroused general concerns, and CET have also been analyzed at various perspectives. Meanwhile CET is trying to make some changes to meet the demands of society, but it is difficult for such a large-scale test. In order to compensate for the situation, some universities, especially those where communicative teaching approach is used, established university-based English proficiency test(UBEPT). The Northeast Normal University (NENU) is one of such universities.Based on investigations into the teaching situation in Northeast Normal University, the dissertation intends to find out if small-scale English proficiency tests have a higher validity than large-scale English proficiency tests such as CET. And the empirical study does confirm that the small-scale English proficiency test of NENU has a higher validity than CET. But at the same time, we find that the small-scale English proficiency test, as a new thing, has many weak points that need to be improved.This dissertation consists of five chapters:Chapter one introduces the necessity of supplementing the nation-wide English proficiency test with university-based English proficiency tests. This chapter mainly discusses the quality of CET (College English Tests) and its evolution --- from the original purpose of stimulating college students to study English to the present function of a threshold for diploma. This chapter also points out that it is unfair to use...