Study On The Current Situation Of College English Achievement Test And Related Countermeasures

As a category of language testing, achievement test serves teaching by providing scientific measurement tools. Meanwhile, it is an effective way to know about and promote college English teaching. A scientific achievement test can not only be conducive to understanding about the teaching process and evaluating teaching but also generate positive backwash effects to guide teaching. However, many studies about language testing have been made on some influential and large-scale tests, such as CET (CET4and CET6), TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and GRE (Graduate Record Examination), studies on achievement test are often ignored. Meanwhile, with continuous reforms and popularization of CET in various fields, few studies on the current situation of CEAT (College English Achievement Test) have been made under the influence of CET.This thesis probes into investigating the current situation of CEAT under the influence of CET on the basis of Backwash Effects and Communicative Testing Theory and propose some recommendations. Three key research questions are raised:(1) What is the current situation of CEAT? What are the specific aspects?(2) What influences does CET have on college teaching and CEAT?(3) What kind of CEAT system should be founded to meet those requirements of college English teaching under the influence of CET?On the above research questions,12teachers and354non-freshmen from different majors in a university of northwest area are chosen as research participants. The questionnaires are main methods to investigate teachers and students to know different opinions on the current situation of CEAT. A further study about students’ different perspectives is done through the interviews. Students and teachers are required to answer20multiple choices separately by questionnaires to investigate their different opinions on CEAT and CET. Besides,9interview questions are conducted to get more insight. Among participants,289students participated in the questionnaire survey and other65students took part in the interview.On the basis of the analysis and comparison of the data, the research results show that some advantages exist in CEAT, such as the great significance of CEAT to English learning, teachers’ responsibilities to the test and good educational administration. However, some problems exist simultaneously, which are mainly presented as follows: the ignorance of the significance of CEAT; large proportion of CET in daily college English teaching; inconsistence between achievement test contents and teaching contents; irrationality of achievement test design and insufficiency of the popularization and application of relevant testing theories etc.According to the above results, some recommendations are put forward by the author:coordinate the relationship between CET and CEAT in daily English teaching to enhance the importance of CEAT; change the traditional testing way and evaluation into a kind of network formative assessment way to enhance the proportion of achievement test; have a close relationship with teaching materials to increase the variety of achievement test contents; set different testing and evaluation standards of CEAT based on test scores and regularize the structure of CEAT to enhance the creativity of test questions; popularize language testing theories and knowledge among teachers.Furthermore, some limitations are presented, which hopes to be improved in future study.