A Correlational Study Of Cet-SET And CET-4 Writing Sub-test

As we generally acknowledge, the aims of language teaching course are very commonly defined in terms of four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among the four skills, speaking and writing are said to be productive skills, and people generally agree on this point. Since speaking and writing are grouped under productive skills, they must enjoy lots of similarities and have a close relationship with each other. Indeed, this point has been extensively proved by many researchers from various fields. Nevertheless, very few correlational studies between speaking test and writing test could be found, let alone the correlation between CET-SET and CET-4 Writing Sub-test.In order to fill the research gap, an empirical research was implemented to attempt to investigate whether or not there is a significant correlation between Chinese college students'CET-SET grades and their CET-4 Writing Sub-test grades. The research questions to be addressed in this study are listed as follows:(1) Is there an overall significant correlation between college students'English speaking ability and their English writing ability? If yes, to what extent they are correlated?(2) How are their speaking ability and writing ability correlated with each other for students of different English writing or speaking levels?(3) What notable characteristics can be found in their English speaking and writing for students with inconsistent speaking and writing levels?In the research experiment, 1,500 college students from different Chinese universities participated in the study. They first attended CET-4 and passed it with total scores no less than 550 points out of 710 points, and later they all attended CET-SET. After the procedure of data collection, the research data were formatted and then exported to SPSS 11.5. Descriptive analysis and Pearson's correlation coefficient were employed to investigate the three research questions. Then the researcher analyzed the results of the experiment. The major findings of this study are shown as follows:(1) There is an overall positive correlation between Chinese college students'English speaking ability and their English writing ability, but the correlation coefficient is very low, only 0.051.(2) For students of different English speaking or writing levels, there is always no significant intragroup correlation between their English speaking ability and their English writing ability.(3) Through the analysis of their speaking and writing samples of students with inconsistent speaking and writing levels, it is found that students with high English speaking ability yet intermediate or even low English writing ability produce extended discourses, speak fluently with a good pronunciation and participate in the group discussions actively in SET whereas they use dominantly simple words and sentence structures as well as redundant and less coherent arguments in their writings; for students with low English speaking ability yet intermediate or even high English writing ability, their SET performance is characterized by influent utterances, plenty of grammatical errors as well as poor pronunciation and intonation while their writings are featured with the clear structure, convincing examples, few grammatical errors as well as flexible sentence structures and word choice.Thus, in order to develop Chinese college students'English in a balanced way, that is, to develop their English speaking ability and writing ability at the same time, in their English study later on, for the students with high English speaking ability yet intermediate or even low English writing ability, they need to work more on their word choice and try to write informative sentences with appropriate cohesive devices in their writings; meanwhile, for the students with low English speaking ability yet intermediate or even high English writing ability, what they need most in their English study later is more practice of their oral English. Only in this way, can college students'English speaking ability and writing ability both reach a high level.