| In the most recent reform of College English Test (CET) carried out in 2006, a new test type known as Long Conversation (LC) was introduced into the listening part and has become one of the compulsory test types since then. This newly developed test type aroused the author s curiosity. What makes LC so special as to be adopted in such a large-scale and high-stake test? Can it validly assess students English listening ability? This thesis focuses on investigating LC as a test type, examining its validity and elaborating on the factors that affect its validity.In examining the validity of LC, both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. The quantitative part involves an experiment in which 50 sophomores from Shanghai Dian Ji University who had taken part in the CET4 before were asked to finish a test paper and a questionnaire within 45 minutes. The test paper was designed strictly according to the specifications compiled by CET committee, including Short Conversation (SC), LC, Listening Passage (LP) and Compound Dictation (CD). The subjects performances were collected and compared with those in CET4 which were regarded as the valid indicators of their English listening ability. The questionnaire was designed on the factors that would affect the validity of LC, such as topic, background knowledge, length and conversation turn and so on.Through the computation on the software Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS) and qualitative analysis of these factors, the author found that 1) this relatively new test type LC can adequately measure students English listening ability; 2) all the factors mentioned in the thesis have some influence on students understanding of LC to some extent and the impact of conversation length, language style, students background knowledge and the times LC is heard is more distinct than others.As for how to control these factors to ensure higher validity, the data in this study is not sufficient for drawing any absolute conclusions. Thus, further studies concerning how to adjust the length, language style, students background knowledge and the times LC is heard to guarantee more reliable testing results are highly recommended.Though some aspects of LC await further studies, what can be safely concluded from this study is that LC is a valid test type in measuring students English listening ability. |
