The Examining Of German Listening Competence In China—A Validity Research Of The PGG Listening Comprehension Test(2013-2017)

The validity research has been one of the most discussed topics in Language Testing since 1960s.However,despite the prosperous research of the test validity,the listening comprehension test was rarely involved.A good reason is that on the one hand the listening comprehension is a cognitive process,which is hard direct to assess,and on the other hand the concept of validity is numerous and complicated.The analysis in this paper bases on Weirs theory about language test validity and takes Weirs socio-cognitive framework for validating listening tests as methodological framework.It takes the PGG listening comprehension test from 2013 to 2017 as research object,analyses its context validity,cognitive validity and scoring validity and discusses principally the following questions:(1)How is listening ability been defined and tested in PGG listening comprehension test?(2)How valid is the PGG listening comprehension test and its results?Namely,how far the test results can stand for the listening ability of the candidate.The validating of context validity focusses on the appropriateness of linguistic and content demands of PGG listening comprehension test.The analysis result shows:Firstly,the task setting,linguistic demands and recorded materials in PGG listening comprehension test have reached the test purpose and requirements of the PGG examination regulations and test the basic language knowledge and competence of the students in German major,as well as their communication ability by using these knowledges in a full scale.Secondly,the listening material and the test items are selected and proposed in accordance with the examination regulations,the potential unstable factors that may cause test bias have been finely avoided.Thirdly,there are lack of specific normative definition and description about the listening ability and test criteria of the PGG listening test.The examiners lack an explicit guideline for devising of the test.The analysis of cognitive validity searches for the question,whether the cognitive process of the examinee during the test corresponds with that in a real-word listening event.The analysis in this section is based on Field's cognitive model in listening process and mainly divided into three parts:Through the analysis of test recording,test methods and test items,it can be verified that despite the technical reasons the recorded material of PGG listening comprehension test can restore an authentic test condition and context for examinee,by means of effective text methods and test formats.And the cognitive validity of the test is guaranteed to a large extent.The analysis of scoring validity is performed in conjunction with the statistical software SPSS.Firstly,the annual test scores are statistical described and show that the test scores in all five yeas conform to the normal distribution;secondly,the coefficient Cronbach's a of the annual scores is calculated and verifies that all the test scores except 2014 have an acceptable internal consistency;at the end,through the calculation of item difficulty and item discrimination,we can see that most of the PGG listening items are in line with the requirements of the degree of differentiation and have a higher reliability coefficient.In summary,this research is a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the listening comprehension part of PGG listening comprehension test.It verifies the context validity,cognitive validity and scoring validity and indicates that the test results can stand for the listening ability of its examinee.Besides,it points out some problems in the task setting of test items and the outline of the exam.At the same time,it also shows that the research on German language tests is insufficient and there is still a lot of research potentiality.