A Quantitative Study On The Orientation Of English Major Achievement Tests

There are obvious differences between foreign language education in English majors and that in other majors in universities. With a professional nature, foreign language education in English majors is a fundamental discipline based on humanities. By contrasting the syllabus for English major and that for other majors, we may find that knowledge, skills and understanding of a graduate in English major differs greatly from that of graduates in other majors.The relationship between education and assessment is so close that education decides the content of assessment, and assessment has backwash effect on education, which may be positively beneficial or negatively harmful. The only way to express the beneficial backwash effect is to express the positively beneficial backwash effect of assessment on education.Validity and reliability are the two significant criteria in the fields of language testing. In fact, however, the balance between validity and reliability is hard to achieve. Tests that are in pursuit of higher validity may be at the loss of validity, and those take validity into account purely may not gain high reliability. Direct, subjective and criterion-referenced testing methods may be used in validity-oriented tests; indirect, objective, norm-referenced and discrete-point testing methods may be used in reliability-oriented tests. Generally speaking, validity-oriented tests benefit the development of education, which may be impeded by reliability-oriented tests. The assessing approach that are beneficial to foreign language education maybear significant features, thus the dissertation focuses on the discussion and proof of those features, and exposes it is validity-oriented tests that benefit the development of foreign language education.The first chapter of this dissertation explores the professional nature of competence-oriented education in English majors, the second chapter, then, expounds the significance of educational assessment being validity-oriented for competence-oriented education. Chapter 3 states the background and methods of the empirical research, and the last chapter, Chapter 4, discusses the results and pedagogical significance of the research.