On The Usefulness Of Test Of English For Xiamen Senior High School Entrance

Test of English for Senior High School Entrance(TESHSE) is a summative test for the course of English in our country‘s compulsory education, and its purpose is to fully and accurately investigate junior high school graduates‘ learning of English and the extent of achieving the specified standard, which is stipulated in the National English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2011). TESHSE has many years of history since its first implementation, and few scholars have conducted in-depth theoretical study on its compilation of testing items and methods of implementation although there are reports of quality analysis for the test results each year. Therefore, by use of the TESHSE of 2014 for students in the city of Xiamen as the sample for analysis and on the basis of the principle of usefulness proposed by Bachman and Palmer, this study conducted a systematic research on the comprehensive quality of the examination paper from the six dimensions of reliability, construct validity, authenticity, interactiveness, washback and practicality in order to make some contribution for the improvement of TESHSE of Xiamen and that of other disricts.This study is made mainly through the combination of questionnaire survey and logical analysis. The Logical analysis is based on the Framework of Test Task Characteristics and the six-dimensions-related problems for logic analysis put forward by Bachman and Palmer, and some effective research methods adopted by Heaton, Zou Shen, Liu Run-qing, Han Bao-cheng etc. are consulted for analyzing the six dimensions of ―usefulness‖ of the test papers. respectively two questionnaires for this study are designed specific to the teachers and students in Xiamen, the content of which mainly includes the information of construct validity, authenticity, interactiveness and washback. The results of the investigation are shown as follows:1. The reliability and practicality in Xiamen‘s TESHSE are very high on the whole.2. In terms of construct validity, the utilization of language knowledge and writing task are best, listening and reading comprehension take the second place, and application of situational communication is nevertheless insufficient;3. While the authenticity of the TESHSE is generally high, the authenticity in the part of listening comprehension and application of situational communication need strengthening;4. The interactiveness in the part of application of situational communication is the best while the objective items demonstrate relatively weak interactiveness;5. The teachers and students in Xiamen are significantly influenced by the test washback, and positive impact is greater than the negative one.