The Effect On Test Validity By The Authenticity Of HSK (Advanced) Listening Material

Authenticity is an important character of language testing. In language testing, researchers generally advocate to use authentic language material, even to keep the originality of language material furthest as a rule of selecting material, only by which they think, can guarantee the authenticity of a test radically. However, many people go on oppugning this authenticity because of various problems existing in practice. We find, by our research, the need of test material authenticity is actually the question of choosing what kind of test method. What it really concerns about is the test validity, i.e. which kind of test method can make upper test validity is the most important question in language testing. Using authentic language material in test is just a method to make upper test validity. The actual HSK (advanced) listening material includes two different parts: original and standardized, resulting from two criterions of authenticity. We are short of demonstrations about which kind of method can make upper validity now. This article is a study about this question and supplies some practical data. The results of our research show that using original material to different examinee groups can make different effect on test validity, but it's useless to improve the test validity. Otherwise, considering the cost of language test development and to alleviate examinee's press, we should abandon original material in constructing our listening test while reforming HSK (advanced) in future.