New Curriculum-Based English Speaking Test Design For Senior Middle Schools

Oral test is the most typical subjective language test, which can directly reflect the basic language proficiency of a candidate and which has a strong backwash effect for language teaching. However, in the field of language test, objective test (the typical representation is multiple-choice test) has an obvious advantage over subjective tests in administrative terms (e.g. oral test). At present, only a few developed cities and provinces, such as Shanghai, Guangdong Province, is at the stage of trial test for oral English for senior middle schools. In the majority areas, there is no oral test at all.The present thesis, with the guidance of testing theories, attempts to explore the design of an English oral test for senior middle school on the basis of the newly issued English Curriculum Standard. Regarding designing, scoring and implementation, the thesis tries to explore an oral testing plan, which is effective, feasible and suitable for different kinds of senior middle schools. This oral test will be listed in the testing items for mid-term or final-term examination, which will bridge the gap of oral English test for senior middle schools, expecting to match it with the large-scale College Entrance Examination , and even for oral English test of college students so that this kind of test will systematically solve the problem of lacking the consistencies between different levels including primary schools, middle schools, colleges and universities, and which will bring positive backwash for language teaching and facilitate the realization of the general goal to foster integrated abilities for language uses, which is embedded in the new English Curriculum Standard.Different research methods are adopted, including literature review, empirical approaches of questionnaire and interview, and statistical analysis. On the basis of the reality of senior middle school English teaching, this paper attempts to enable this oral testing design to meet the needs and requirements of teaching practice, so as to guide our language teaching in the direction of cultivating and developing learners'ability to use the language.The present thesis gives a historical review of language testing at first, emphasizing the theoretical foundation of oral test, the characteristics of oral test, and organization of oral test. The thesis then introduces the essence of English Curriculum Standards from different perspectives: one approach, two evaluations, two processes, four tasks, five aspects and nine degrees; the general goal of developing learners'integrated ability of language using; detailed descriptions of Level 6 to Level 9 about Speaking for senior middle school students; testing system and requirements for oral testing form, scoring and criteria.The paper also discusses oral test constructing, scoring, examiners'training and administration of testing affairs. It starts with the objectives of testing, the prospective candidates and the characteristics of the testing. It emphasizes that the range of testing content should reflect the features of courses for senior middle school. According to the requirements...