The Study Of Authenticity Of The Writing Test Tasks For English Majors

Writing is a very important language skill for communication,especially for English majors.The final writing test is used as a means to assess to what extent students have mastered the course content at the end of the term,which aims to provide feedback information and then enhance further teaching and learning.In the field of language testing,the significance of authenticity has been widely acknowledged.In addition,authenticity is regarded as one of the most important qualities determining the overall usefulness of a test.Therefore,it is worth exploring that to what degree the final writing test has its authenticity.However,it has been found that the researches on authenticity at home are mainly conducted in oral testing and reading testing.Quite few studies have been carded out to explore the authenticity of the writing test,especially on the aspect of test task.Based on the status quo mentioned above,the thesis attempts to explore the authenticity of the final writing test task for English majors,which aims to answer the two research questions:1) What target language use(TLU) tasks should be selected as a basis for final writing test tasks? 2) To what extent does the final writing test task has its authenticity,in terms of the input characteristics?The samples in the study include four pieces of final writing test papers for English majors from a municipal-owned normal university,(the testees are second-year undergraduate students) and the English writing textbook.The methodology involved in the study is mainly a descriptive study,which is conducted to respectively describe the input characteristics of final writing test tasks and TLU tasks,on the basis of the framework of task characteristics proposed by Bachman and Palmer.In addition,the quantitative method is adopted in the research.To what extent the information of subcategories are included in the description of input characteristics will be analyzed,and the differential values are to be obtained to decide the degree of the input authenticity.The findings from the research are drawn as follows:1.In the domain of TLU task,short-essay writing tasks(argumentation) should be selected as TLU tasks as a basis for the final writing test tasks;2.Generally speaking,the final writing test has comparatively high authenticity,in terms of the input characteristics,which is based on the following findings:1) The final writing test task has very high authenticity in terms of input format;2) The final writing test task has comparatively high authenticity in terms of vocabulary;3) The final writing test task has comparatively high authenticity in terms of syntax;4) The final writing test task has very high authenticity in terms of graphology;5) The final writing test task has very low authenticity in terms of cohesive devices;6) The final writing test task has high authenticity in terms of functional characteristics;7) The final writing test task has very high authenticity in terms of figurative characteristics;Although the study may offer some implications to test designers or teachers who are involved in teaching English writing,there are still a lot of limitations,like the small size of the samples,which needs to be further improved.