Evaluating Lexical Competence In Shmet

Since2008, SHMET’s lexical part has taken on a new form “Banked Cloze”which requires students to fill9blanks in a passage by choosing from the10wordsgiven. This thesis aims at exploring SHMET’s lexical evaluation mode and trendtowards reform as well as its washback effect.This thesis starts with an overview of the history, development and current statusof SHMET and then selects the lexical items of6years’ papers for comparativeresearch.With reference to the vocabulary assessment theory by John Read and thetask characteristics framework by Bachman&Palmer, the research demonstrates theimportance and status of lexical competence in language competence. On this basis,the thesis proposes two research questions:(1)Does the new form of lexical test in SHMET“Banked cloze” better reflect theactual lexical competence of Shanghai senior high school students than MC?(2)How does SHMET lexical test evaluate lexical competence?The six years’ SHMET papers are divided into two groups in terms ofquestion type. In answer to these two questions, qualitative and quantitative analysishas been conducted on the basis of the data of SHMET to reach an objectiveconclusion.The criteria include FV, discrimination, distribution of test points, the weight ofeasy, medium and difficult questions.The conclusion shows that Banked Cloze aims at assessing students’ lexicalknowledge and use in authentic context. It changes the traditional method of testingvocabulary in a single sentence and bears a closer relationship with reading and cloze.Thus, it helps to achieve the goal of changing from testing language knowledge totesting language use, which has brought about a desirable effect on teaching. Teachersand students are expected to lay more emphasis on using authentic language materialsto teach and study vocabulary in real-life context.