A Tentative Study Of Improvement Of CET-SET

The economic growth of our country and the increase in the foreign exchanges pose an urgent need for the non-English-major undergraduates to improve their oral English proficiency. However, spoken English has long been a weak part in the college English teaching and learning and very few of the college students can engage in effective daily communication in English. With a view to changing the situation, College English Testing Committee has launched College English Test-Spoken English Test (CET-SET) in hope of improving the English oral proficiency of the college students, which has played a positive role to a certain extent while on the whole, has not exerted enough influence on college English teaching and learning for the limited number of students it affects. In light of the situation, the author puts forward a new model of CET-SET based on the surveys conducted and it is hoped that the beneficial backwash effect of tests be utilized to improve the spoken English of the undergraduates.Three hypotheses are presented to be testified in the study. Firstly, college students' overall oral English proficiency is, generally speaking, unsatisfactory. Secondly, teachers and students hold a positive attitude towards CET-SET and thirdly, tests, especially important tests, do have a powerful backwash effect on language teaching and learning. Two instruments, questionnaire and interview are employed in the surveys, on the basis of which the solutions are put forward. It is proposed that the presently adopted CET-SET should be divided into two separate speaking tests: CET-SET-4 and CET-SET-6 and the former should be made required of the college students within a few years. Such aspects of CET-SET-4 as test development, test tasks, test rationale and test administration are all offered an exhaustive account. Since in CET-SET-4, the number of candidates will increase dramatically, it is recommended the indirect testing method should be adopted. An elaboration of the practicality of the indirect testing method, scoring of CET-SET-4, training of the scorers and pre-training of the candidates is provided to back up the new model.The lack of importance of spoken English in college English teaching and learning currently results from the absence of an effective speaking test. Therefore, the reform of CET-SET is inevitable in the long run. More attention is expected to be directed towards the reform of CET-SET with the new model proposed in this study, resulting in an improvement in the spoken English of the undergraduates.