A Systematical Comparison Of CET In Relation To TOEFL And IELTS

The College English Test (CET) is a national large-scale test, administered on behalf of the Ministry of Education of China. The purpose of CET is to make assessment of the English proficiency of the students and provide feedback information for the teachers to improve classroom teaching. The test made colleges;teachers and students realize the importance of the college English teaching. It improved the college students' English level. But it also has many deficiencies, which attracts attention from societies. So, it's imperative to reform this test. Though the CET Committee has taken many measures to reform it, the effect was dissatisfied. As world-famous English tests, TOEFL and IELTS have a lot of operative experiences and ideas worth learning. But domestic researchers seldom compare CET with other similar English tests. The systematic comparison among CET, TOEFL and IELTS is not mentioned. So, this thesis focuses on this topic.The thesis systematically compares the coincidences and differences among CET, TOEFL and IELTS from four aspects as contents, methods, management as well as testing ideas. Some comparative conclusions are drawn as follows:Firstly, new TOFEL and IELTS synthetically test the four skills as listening, reading, writing and speaking. However, CET only tests listening, reading, and writing skills separately, speaking is excluded. And the contents of TOEFL and IELTS are authentic, while the contents of CET are feigned to a certain extent.Secondly, new TOEFL is an internet-based test, and IELTS combines paper-based test with viva voce, while CET mainly applies paper-based testing method. New TOEFL and CET use standard score to reflect the examination result, in comparison with IELTS that uses graded score. All these three tests report both monomial score and total score. Furthermore, new TOEFL and IELTS describe the language competence of examinees in detail.Thirdly, the administrators of TOEFL and IELTS are self-run testing organizations, which is professional with strong service consciousness. However, the administrator of CET belongs to government-run testing organization, which is not so specialized and short of service consciousness to some degree.Fourthly, new TOEFL and IELTS regard language as a kind of communicative competence. And the tests are designed according to the view of communicative language testing. But CET still regards language as a system of structure or symbol. And this test is mainly designed according to the view of structural language testing. Moreover, both TOEFL and IELTS have scientific views of the function of language testing, and restrict the function of language test effectively. However, CET doesn't understand its function deeply, and lack of effective measures to restrict, which finally caused the exaggeration of its function.In order to solve the present problems of CET, the thesis uses the successful experience of TOEFL and IELTS for reference, proposes four suggestions, including establishing the advanced testing ideas, erecting the intact and authentic contents, adopting modern testing methods and advocating scientific management.