A Survey Of The Present Condition In The Spoken English Test Of Changsha Senior High School Entrance Examination

Middle school English teaching takes as a goal the development of students’communicative competence. The essence of English Curriculum Standards says thegeneral goal is developing learners’ integrated ability of language using. Junior middleschool students are supposed to meet the requirement of Level3to Level5onSpeaking. Whether or not the goal is reached should be measured through testing.Spoken English Test of Senior Entrance Examination (henceforth, SETSEE) is animportant means of measuring junior middle school students’ oral communicativecompetence. The assessment of students’ spoken English is an important part forEnglish teaching. The testing of students’ spoken English can bring in a positive washback for English teaching, for it can promote students’ comprehensive abilitydevelopment. Spoken English testing can, in an effective way, examine and evaluatestudents’ competence of using oral English.However, according to the theories of modern language test and through thesurvey of Spoken English Test of Changsha Senior Entrance Examination and theanalysis of the results, questionnaire and teachers’ interviews, this paper has drawn thefollowing conclusion: we find that there are some problems in the Spoken English Testof Changsha Senior High School Entrance Exam. The test items of the current SETSEE,such as self-show, reading aloud and asking and answering questions, fail to measurestudents’ oral communicative competence. The scorers’ evaluation criteria，thediscrepancy of scorers’professional skills and testing experiences influence theirjudgments, reflected on the examinee’s scores．It is very difficult for the scorers.This thesis is written after studying the literature review, doing interview andquestionnaire. It aims to study and analyze the problems in the Spoken English Test ofChangsha Senior High School Entrance Exam, and tries to put forward somesuggestions for the reformation of the Oral Test of Changsha Senior High SchoolEntrance Exam. On the basis of the reality of junior middle school English teaching,this paper attempts to enable these suggestions to meet the needs and requirements ofteaching practice, so as to guide our language teaching in the direction of cultivatingand developing learners’ ability to use the language.