A Comparative Study On The Listening Subtests Of The Traditional CET-4 And The New CET-4

With the development of the theories and practices in language testing, it becomes a tendency that test designers pay more attention to the assessment of testees'communicative competence in language use. Accordingly, the College English Test (CET), a well-established large-scale standardized test in China, has undergone great reforms, particularly, in listening component.The present study sets its aim to examine the innovations in the listening component of CET-4 (CET-LT) by comparing the traditional CET-LT with the new CET-LT. Firstly, the study reviews briefly relevant literature about the nature of listening and about the test of listening comprehension, as well as the qualities of a communicative EFL test. Secondly, both the traditional CET-LT and the new CET-LT are studied to examine the differences between the two. Thirdly, the paper discusses what innovations have been made in the new CET-LT in terms of input materials and test format. Fourthly, both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to investigate the subjects'opinions about the two listening tests and to analyze the data drawn from the two tests. Finally, the conclusions of the study are drawn: the new CET-LT has made satisfactory innovations in test format and input materials, and it can better reflect the subjects'listening competence. Compared with the traditional CET-LT, some innovations are made in the new CET-LT. Firstly, the input materials are more authentic, with some features of spontaneous speech, such as hesitations, backtracking, repetitions, false start, etc. Secondly, the new CET-LT adopts more subjective items, which improves the validity of the test. Thirdly, the test tasks are made closer to real-life use of English, and thus the authenticity of the test is further improved.Hopefully, this study can contribute to an in-depth understanding of the language abilities measured in the listening component of the CET, and the innovations made in the new CET will exert a positive backwash effect on EFL learning and teaching in China.