A Study Of Its Backwash Of CET Spoken English Test

Since CET-SET (College English Test-Spoken English Test) has been conducted nationwide in 1999, its backwash effect on English teaching and learning at colleges has aroused great controversy among educators, government authorities in education, language teachers, students and parents.The present study aims to investigate the backwash effect of CET-SET in colleges and universities. Specifically, it intends to find out whether the test has fulfilled its mission to induce positive backwash effect, which is to make college English teaching consistent with the new assessment of a trial version of the New College English Curriculum Requirements approved by The Ministry of Education in February 2004, which emphasizes on cultivating integrative English competence, computer-based multi-media teaching. In this research, a multi-method design is contrived, using interview, observation and questionnaire to collect data of samples from 48 teachers (23 examiners of CET-SET) and 290 students who are visited at one college and two universities in Xi'an, China. By combinations of various instruments, such as Microsoft Excel, SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software, the current study generates the following findings:1. The research has found out that language teachers, especially those who serve as SET examiners are more supportive of the SET than non-examiners; CET-SET takers (who set for SET once or twice) present more positive attitude to it than non-takers; juniors show more positive attitude to it than sophomores and freshmen;2. From the data collected from teachers and students, there exist agreements and striking differences:1) Both teachers and students involved in the research agree to the feasibility of implementation of oral English test at colleges. They approve that CET-SET has a strong positive effect on teaching English at colleges; teachers and students agree to the low compatibility between contents of CET-SET and materials of teaching English at colleges. They approve that it has a weak effect on teaching English at colleges;2) From the teachers' responses, the teachers' educational backgrounds (such as teachers' rich experience in oral and written practice, experiences of studying or working abroad or owning a higher academic title etc.) and the teachers' teaching methodologies have very limited backwash effect on students' oral English improvement while students have just opposite ideas; teachers hold the idea that multi-media teaching courseware exerts a strong backwash effect on students' oral English learning but except freshmen while most students believe that it has very limited effect.In spite of the fact that some findings are contrary with original expectations from government leaders or experts in education due to various reasons, they provide...