| Language testing has gone through three phases in its process of development: Before the 1970s, the Analytic Approach, which is also called the Psychometric-structural Approach, held a dominant position in the world of language testing. The theoretical basis of this approach is structuralism. Structuralists believed that language is a system composed of phonology, morphology, lexis and syntax, and this system is divisible. Hence, the multiple-choice——a type of item which lends itself admirably to statistical analysis, gains its great popularity among language learners. Since the mid-1970s, language tested as a whole is concerned. Spolsky calls this period as the psycholinguistic-sociolinguistic era. During this period, integrative tests, such as cloze, correction, listening comprehension, oral and composition win people's favor and begin to be used broadly. From the mid-1980s to now, communicative language ability becomes the focus of linguists'attention. With the development of communicative teaching, communicative testing begins to receive increasing attention. This approach believes that linguistic communication is, as a matter of fact, a process of interpretation and negotiation between two sides. Language testing should be carried out in an authentic language context with authentic language input so that a test taker's language proficiency could be evaluated through observation of their performance in the test. Based on this theory, communicative testing comes out. From the above review of language testing, it can be seen that linguistic approach decides language testing approach, testing content and type.Communicative test is concerned primarily with how language is used in communication. Success is judged in terms of the effectiveness of the communication which takes place rather than formal linguistic accuracy. In discrete test of Psychometric-structural Approach and integrative test of Psycholinguistic-sociolinguistic Approach, test takers accept test content designed previously and are"outsiders"of the test. While in communicative test, test takers become part of the test, participating in the communicative process. In discrete test, language is separated into elements, thus each test item is independent. Integrative test requires test takers to use several language skills simultaneously, so context of language testing is clear. Communicative testing combines the advantages of these two tests, therefore it is considered as an ideal model for evaluating language learning through language testing.From the 1960s, language test and evaluation concerns primarily validity. The study on validity has been through three stages: From the 1960s to 1970s, the representative definition of validity has been given by Lado as"does a test test what it want to test?"In the 1980s, validity is identified as three main types: rational, empirical and construct validity. Since the 1980s till now, validity has been considered and analyzed as an integrative one. The significance of validation study lies in that validity is the most important norm for a test and it is the core of a test.CET-4, a national proficiency test, has been practiced for nearly 20 years. It has influenced college English teaching profoundly. On the one hand, CET-4 has promoted college English teaching and learning in China. On the other hand, it has negative aspects such as its low validity and inappropriate item types, and has brought negative backwash on English teaching and learning, which has aroused heated debate on this issue.In view of these issues, CET-4 was reformed in 2006 in order to improve its quality. Then it is worthwhile to probe into this new test to evaluate whether it has discarded its shortcomings to examine test takers'real communicative competence or not.Based on communicative testing theory, this thesis gives a detailed analysis of the item types and existing problems of the new test. And the results can be concluded that because of its large scale, new CET-4 is still designed in a way to protect its reliability and operationalization. Thus, the validity of the test is not satisfactory. For example, listening is designed without specific context; dictation does not examine test takers'listening ability; as a most productive item, writing has a small proportion in the whole test, and its topics and types are too limited and stereo-typed, etc. In a word, although it is reformed from the aspects of item type and scoring system, new CET-4 is still a test within the framework of structural approach. It can not test a test taker's real communicative language competence.In this thesis, a small-scaled communicative test in a university or among universities is proposed to solve the above-mentioned problems. Further more, specific description of this test from its content, operation and administration is discussed with the assumption that internal and external validity of the test will be improved greatly.
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