A Study Of Changes In The Difficulty And Discrimination Of Listening Items In Senior Middle School Entrance Exams Under The Development Of Shanghai New Curriculum

Listening is the precondition not only for human communication activities butalso for the acquisition of second language. The ability of listening comprehension isgenerally regarded as an important indicator to measure one’s foreign languageproficiency. As a vital section in Shanghai Senior Middle School Entrance Examination(SSMSEE), English Listening Comprehension Test (ELCT) accounts for20%in thewhole test. With the issuing of Shanghai New Curriculum (revised manuscript),listening part took some changes in text types and score. Since many exam-orientedresearches have been done on how to use examination strategies and how to copewith testing points, there is little research on the difficulty and discrimination oftesting items. This thesis will make quantitative analysis on the developmenttendency of difficulty and discrimination of the English Listening Comprehension Testunder Shanghai New Curriculum to judge whether they took a significant changewith the passage of time.Apart from giving a review on the theories of listening comprehension andlanguage testing, this research is also based upon experimental study into the ELCT inSSHSEE. The participants of this study are65students coming from Grade9inShanghai Tian Lin No.3Middle School. They are required to take ELCT in2005and2010’s SSMSEE for data collection, the scores from which would be analyzed bystatistic software Excel and SPSS to judge (1) the difficulty and discrimination in eachquestion type of ELCT in SSMSEE in early and recent period of Shanghai NewCurriculum;(2) whether there is significant difference in ELCT in terms of difficultyand discrimination between early and recent period of Shanghai New Curriculum;(3)what the result reflects according to the theory of item analysis.The result indicates that (1) the difficulty in ELCT are generally high in the testsof2005and2010, and most items own the low discrimination;(2) the items in2010are averagely easier and less differential than those in2005;(3) the discrimination ofEnglish listening test in recent SSMSEE under Shanghai New Curriculum shows adownward trend and should be raised in future. Finally, some suggestions are made for the improvement of ELCT in SSMSEE.