An Analysis On The Culture Elements In Test Papers Of Cet 4

With the acceleration of globalization in every aspect of life, the concept of intercultural communication has been infiltrating in people's mind. For successful communication between people with different culture background, people are in increasing need of acquiring knowledge about different cultures. An effective way to understand a different culture is to study its language. English, as a universal language, has become the official language of many countries. English learning upsurge has been seen in various countries. College English, one of the basic required courses in Chinese universities and colleges, was established over two decades ago and has experienced several reforms in China. Moreover, in English teaching practice, scholars and experts are paying more and more attention to the teaching of culture. CET 4 is the standardized national-wide English test for college students, whether it can properly evaluate the effect of culture teaching in college English teaching is a valuable research topic. Based on the analysis of test papers of CET-4 and the culture elements in test questions, this paper conducts research in both qualitative and quantitative approach to present the current situation of culture test in CET-4 and constructive ideas towards further study.The research subjects of this paper are the test questions of CET 4 test papers from January 1990 to December 2008, which include fourteen test papers. Every test paper is analyzed in both qualitative and quantitative method. Based on current theory about culture and the analysis of the test questions, all the test questions are classified into culture of communication test items and culture of communication test items. Regarding research content, I mainly discuss the test items in the listening comprehension section, the reading comprehension section, the cloze section and the writing section in CET 4. As for research method, every test question is qualitatively analyzed at first, and then the general trend of the change about culture test in CET 4 is analyzed through quantitative way. The collected data is crosswisely compared and longitudinally compared.The result of the research illustrates that there is a significant change about the culture test in CET 4 after the reform in 1996 although the two kinds of test items take different percentage respectively. Before the reform, CET-4 concentrated on the test of culture of knowledge. After the reform, the test items of culture of communication are increasing in CET 4. Although the test of culture of communication do not overweigh the test of culture of knowledge, it is obvious that the current trend for culture test focus in CET 4 is shifting to culture of communication.At last, the following conclusion can be obtained from analyzing the results: first of all, the change of culture of knowledge test items and culture of communication test items'proportion in CET 4 verifies the importance of culture teaching in college English teaching, and illustrates that the cultivation of students'intercultural communication competence has become the main purpose of college English teaching. Secondly, through the analysis of culture elements in test papers of CET 4, the thesis proposes new ideas for intercultural communication competence test in CET 4. At last, the results of this thesis can be used to guide the future design of test papers of CET 4.