An Empirical Study On Pragmatic Assessment Of Situational Multiple Choices In NMET

The pragmatic assessment has attracted interests of researchers from both pragmatics and language test. However, the pragmatic assessment studies in China mainly are manifested in the introduction and summary of the foreign theories with qualitative methods, lacking the edges of both quantitative and qualitative methods. The present study tries to investigate the pragmatic property and tendency of NMET on the basis of the collected data of situational multiple choices in NMET, including 33,145 words.The thesis mainly addresses three ensuring aspects: the composing elements,diachronic tendency and regional difference of the situational multiple choices in NMET. The results of the data-based analysis indicate that: first,the test is composed of both linguistic elements (vocabulary, grammar) and pragmatic elements (speech acts, discourse context), but the two kinds of element possess different degree of pragmatic properties. Second, after 35 years of diachronic reforming, the test is entrenched with increasingly higher degree of pragmatic property and shedding more efforts on the test of students’ pragmatic competence. Third, the traditional regions of NMET concerns more about the systematicity of English test,while some provincial proposition regions which have taken reforming on NMET early put efforts on the openness, with more pragmatic elements integrated in. Fourth, the English test and instruction in China should emphasize students’ pragmatic competence, and the negative factors of pragmatic acquisition should be avoided in the process of English teaching methods,arrangement and materials input. The findings will not only provide guidance for the English tests and second language instruction, but also contribute to the further development of pragmatic assessment studies and research methodology, and fulfill the blankness of related studies in China by applying pragmatic assessment theories into data-based analysis.