Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Itis commonly assumed that the development of language testing has experienced three stages:the psychometric-structuralist era, the psycholinguistic-sociolinguistic era and thecommiinicative paradigm. With the development of the theories of language testing，itimproves a lot，especially after the reform of 2006. But it has its own shortages. The study isto find out the drawbacks of reading comprehension in CET4 and put forward some beneficialmeasures to improve it.It is known to all that English is increasingly important in modem society. A largenumber of companies and corporations set the certification of CET4 or CET6 as the standardfor the employers to choose the applicants. So if one has the certification of CET4，he or sheis easier to find a decent job than one who doesn\\\'t. The reading comprehension test，whichtakes 35% of the total marks，including Part II Reading Comprehension (skimming andscanning) and Part IV Reading Comprehension (reading in depth), plays an essential role inobtaining the certification.

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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

By using text analysis research methods, the thesis aims at exploring the problems ofreading part in CET4 from the perspective of communicative language testing and attemptingto find some useful ways to improve the exam. First, the author intends to provide someuseful information to test designers to improve the design of CET4 reading comprehensiontest, and make it reflect students’ reading ability in real world comprehensively and efficiently.Second, it is possible to help teachers understand the requirements of reading comprehensionand improve students\\\' reading ability. In addition, the paper applies the characteristics ofcommunicative language testing in the CET4 reading test, and attempts to study the CET4reading comprehension with a new research vision for the future research.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Reading Theory

Christine Nuttall (2000) put forward three different definitions of reading which peoplemay hold. The first one emphasizes decoding, deciphering, identifying, etc. The second onefocuses on articulating, speaking and pronouncing, etc. The last one pays attention tounderstand, respond, meaning, etc.Reading is a silent and personal activity，which does not mean that it is individual work.However, some linguistics (Grellet,1981; Wallace, 1992; Silberstein,1994) agree with theopinion that reading is a process of interaction between writer and reader or between text andreader. From this point of view, reading can be understood as a complex cognitive process inwhich reader and text communicate to (re)create meaningful discourse. In the process, thesender (he sends messages to others), the encoder( he encodes the messages in his mind), orthe writer shares his messages in his mind with the receiver, decoder or reader through text.After the text is decoded by the receiver, the communication is achieved.Reading is also a constant process of guessing. Christine Nuttall (2000) called it a psycholinguistic guessing game， Prediction is extremely important in the process, because itactivates schemata: they can stimulate the previous experiences and knowledge about thetopic in the mind. A schema (plural schemata) is a mental structure, which is about all theparticular experience one has. When one reads a text, he will understand the messages in thetext based on his schemata. If his schemata are sufficiently similar to the writer\\\\\\\'s, he will findit easy to understand the text. If the development of the text is different from the reader\\\'sschemata, the reader needs to change his schemata. Schemata are built on experience. That isto say, new experience can alter schemata.

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2.2 Reading Testing Techniques

Multiple choice question requires students to select the best answer that completes asentence or answer a question from several options. In multiple choice question, the correctanswer is called\\\"the key\\\", and the other choices are called \\\"the distractors\\\".Scoring can be done by machine in these few decades. Therefore, multiple choicequestion can be common and effective in measuring learners\\\' receptive skills，such aslistening, reading, grammar knowledge and vocabulary. That is why it is popular in the testingworld. True-false question presents a series of statements and asks the students to decide if theyare true or false according to the text.It can be constructed easily and quickly. It has two disadvantages. It can only test onepiece of information in each item. What\\\'s more，the examinees have a 50% chance ofanswering correctly even if they do not read the text. There is 汪 solution to the problems ofguessing, which is also widely used in CET4 and CET6. That is to include a thirdchoice—\\\"not given\\\". In this kind of test, each statement should be well-written, clear andeasy to understand, otherwise, poor candidates would make confusion.

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Chapter 3 Research Design.......       19

3.1 Research Questions....... 19

3.2 Research Subject.......   19

3.3 Research Methods....... 19

3.4 Research Procedures....... 19

3.5 Data Collection .......20

Chapter 4 Results and Discussions....... 21

4.1 Authenticity .......21

4.2 Interactiveness.......   29

4.3 Context .......32

4.4 Summary....... 33

Chapter 5 Conclusions .......  35

5.1 Findings .......35

5.2 Implications....... 36

5.2.1 Implications for Test Designers....... 36

5.2.2 Implications for Language Teachers and Learners .......36

5.3 Limitations and Suggestions .......37

Chapter 4 Results and Discussions

4.1 Authenticity

According to the test syllabus of CET4, topics can be divided into three types: humanities,social science and natural science. Humanities is the science which studies culture, human emotionsand ethics, such as religion, philosophy, linguistics, literature, art, history, anthropology, psychologyand so on. Social science is the science which studies the social phenomena, such as economics,politics, sociology, law, social psychology and so forth. Natural science is the science which studiesdifferent substances and phenomena in natural world, such as astronomy, physics, chemistry,biology, geography, math, information science, mechanics, system science and the like. According to the survey (as we can see in Table 4.1), there are 20 passages in total for 5 sets ofCET4 reading test. In total, there are 2 passages on the humanities (10%), 13 passages on socialscience (65%), and 5 passages on natural science (25%).

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Conclusion

It is known to all that CET4 test plays an increasingly important role in college students. Alarge number of students view CET4 as their goals of learning English in college, because the CET4certificate is of great significance in hunting for decent jobs. Reading ability is the dominant factorin learning English and also indispensable in CET4 test. Reading test acts a main part in measuringteaching and learning. Test exerts an influence on teaching and learning, while it can be positive ornegative. If the test reflects what the syllabus requires，it will be positive; if not, it will be negative.In other words, a good test can promote teaching and learning. To some extent, communicativelanguage test is a good one which aims at developing students\\\' language ability in real life.Therefore，CET4 reading part should be in accordance with communicative language test，which isauthentic, interactive, and contextual.In the thesis, the author aims at exploring the inadequacies of the reading part of CET4 andfind out some measures to improve it. Text analysis is used to find out the answers. The resultsindicate that there are some shortcomings in CET4 reading part. Consequently, some improvementsand reforms should be carried out in CET4 reading part to be a communicative one.

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