Analysis Of Content Validity Of Listening Comprehension In The College Entrance Examination

The validity research on college Entrance Examination has been a continuous heated topic. However, most validity studies related to College Entrance Examination have focused on Reading Comprehension. There is not much research about the validity of Listening Comprehension. It is necessary to collect and analyze the content-related evidence of Listening Comprehension of College Entrance Examination to validate the listening tasks. Based on Bachman & Palmer’s framework of task characteristics and guided by the specific requirements of Curriculum Standards, the Teaching Syllabus and the Examination Syllabus. The author puts forward a revised framework, to design the validity research about Listening Comprehension of College Entrance Examination, aiming to verify, to what extent, the Listening Comprehension tasks have matched or not matched with these three syllabuses.The author has examined the test questions, the answers as well as the options of the Listening Comprehension in the College Entrance Examination of Shanghai in 2015, among which there are 10 short conversations, two passages, two long conversations and 24 question items. Results show that the Listening Comprehension tasks of College Entrance Examination of Shanghai in 2015 has a high content validity in terms of the length of passages, the size of vocabulary, the range of topics and the intonations and accents the speakers. However, the author also finds some points which are not well suited for the requirements of Curriculum. For example, some of the listening materials are either too long or too short. The speed of the listening materials is faster than that of the requirements of the Curriculum. The style of the test is relatively simple. The section of the accent does not involves examination of the phonetic variations. This thesis aims to give some suggestions for the reference to the English teaching of Senior high school.