Application Of Communicative Reading Comprehension Testing To College English Achievement Test

Language testing, as an import part in EFL( English as a foreign language) teaching and learning, has been more concerned with. The scientific testing is an effective way to check, adjust and improve language teaching and learning. At present, many studies have been made on the nationwide, large-scale standardized tests, namely TEM 4/8 and CET 4/6. However, few researches have been done on small-scale tests and formative tests, such as college-wide achievement test. Meanwhile, many people are doubtful about the quality of such tests and the backwash effect on English teaching and learning. So there is no doubt that the reading comprehension subtest in college English achievement test used to evaluate students' reading competence has been questioned in terms of the quality and the backwash effect.The thesis attempts to investigate problems existing in the reading comprehension subtest of college English achievement test (CEAT) and try to raise some ways to the improvement in the reading subtest. The method used in the research is a combination of quantitative and qualitative studies. Firstly, the attitude of non-English majors and college English teachers towards the reading subtest in CEAT and the potential deficiencies in the reading subtest are obtained by conducting the questionnaire survey and interviews in North University of China (NUC). The results indicate that the current CEAT reading comprehension subtests do exert certain harmful backwash effect on English learning and teaching. They doubt whether the reading comprehension subtest can assess and evaluate their reading comprehension ability very well. Based on the analysis of the nature of reading comprehension, the author finds that communicative reading comprehension testing may be a better way to evaluate students' reading competence. To verify the hypothesis, the author conducts an experiment among the students of two classes, whose result suggests that the subjects score significantly higher on communicative reading comprehension tasks than the current reading comprehension tasks. Thus communicative reading comprehension testing is preferable to the traditional reading comprehension testing.Finally, tentative suggestions for the future construction of reading comprehension subtest in CEAT are provided on the basis of findings of the present research in order that the reading comprehension subtest might serve the EFL teaching and learning at its best.