The Content Validity On The National Matriculation English Tests (NMET) Of The Year 2011 Guided By The New Curriculum Standard

Being the most important test in China, the annual National College EntranceExamination（NCEE) has a huge social influence with high stakes. The National MatriculationEnglish Test (NMET) is an indispensible part of it. The New Curriculum Standard reform hasbeen carried out for several years since 2001. And the year 2011 is special for the NMET testtakers in Shanxi province, for after three years’instruction to the new curricular Englisheducation thought, teaching method and the new English books , it is the first time for thestudents to take NMET designed under the guide of the new curricular . It can be said to be amilestone in the education of the Shanxi province.The New Curriculum Standard places great emphasis on the triangular teaching methodsincluding the knowledge skill, the emotion skill and the learning strategies. The requirementfor the testing scope of the language knowledge under the New Curriculum Standard extendsand specifies. Not only do the students use the knowledge of the pronunciation, vocabularyand the grammar, but also they should master the functions and the topics which they havelearned in the class.It is critical to do this research to make a contribution to the evaluation of the new testpapers and give some insights to the reform of the new curriculum. And the purpose of thestudy is to explore the content validity of the NMET.The author constructs a new framework on the basis of the previous researches of thecontent validity of different tests and the Bachman & Palmer’s task characteristics framework.By employing the new assessment framework, the author focuses on the two aspects, theinput and the expected responses. Through careful analysis of every part of the whole test paper, the author will make acomparison of the data collected with the New Curriculum Standard of the senior schooleducation, the test specification as well as the test syllable with the purpose to find whetherthese requirements are tested in the new curriculum testing paper and make a judgment towhat extent it covers the spirit of the new curriculum.The author finds out that the NMET of the year 2011 guided by the New CurriculumStandard, on average, is a test with relatively high content validity. It mainly expressed thespirit of the new curriculum, which is to check the students’ability of integrative use ofknowledge. And it objectively reflected the guided idea and the requirement of the testsyllable and the test specification, showed the overall requirement of the New CurriculumStandard in English. The NMET gave emphasis to the notion of language using, and it notonly tested the mastery and the extent of the understanding of the basic knowledge of English,but also test students’ability to use the knowledge in a given task and the specific context, aswell as the integrative use of the knowledge. However, the new curriculum reform is still inthe exploring period, there are inevitably some deficiencies affecting the quality of the paperdesigning, which is addressed by the author in the last chapter. And the author also gives somesuggestions for the EFL teaching.