Study Of The Language Of Probability Of Putonghua Proficiency Test

Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi(shortened as PSC below )is a main component ofpopularizing Putonghua and an important measure to develop Putonghua into a scientific,standardized and systematic stage. Directed under "An outline on Putonghua ShuipingCeshi" (shortened as "Outline" below ) of the National Language Committee ,PSC isgradually being launched .The National and Local Language Com/nittee and the Center ofPSC have done much study work in the theory and methodology of test. PSC is a newand more complicated systematic project of language test, it not only needs macroscopicguidance of policy and the direction of theory, but the microscopic investigation andstatistic analysis. The Outline, as the total outline directing PSC, needs the powerfulsupport of concerning data of the Statistical Linguistics about the test theory andprobability, etc. In PSC, whether the demand of the Outline and the frequency of theinitial consonant, compound vowel, tone and syllable of the test paper conform to theChinese objective language probability and what probability the test paper should reachare still a vital issue awaiting further exploration and development. As a matter of fact,PSC, as a kind of language test, is characterized by widespread objects and specialimplementation, in which only with the aid of the Statistic Linguistics in theory andmethodology, rather than from the experience, can accurate data and quota be acquiredand judged and evaluated with more scientism and accuracy in a more extensive field. If lacking the data support of the Statistical Linguistics, PSC is inevitably empirical.On the ground of the Applied Linguistics, this essay tries to study PSC by experiment andanalysis in the way of the scientific theory of the Statistical Language, to give a moreobjective and scientific answer to the probability by means of quantity, to guide how towork out the standard test, which assure that the objective data of the test questions arenearly same as the Chinese objective probability and the test questions are more objective,typical and regular. In this thesis, we did much scientific and careful statistics on Modem ChineseFrequency Dictionary and the test paper, adopted some achievement from AcousticsHandbook and PSC Study, made some statistic analysis and theoretic reason. By thecomparison of the Chinese objective probability with the Outline's demand and theprobability of the test paper, we made the following conclusions: 1) the test demand of theOutline nearly corresponds to the Chinese objective probability; 2) the test questions inthe item bank mostly correspond to the Chinese objective probability; 3) the readingmaterial of 400 words can be composed of: two articles of 200 words or two articles of300 words and 100 words; 4) there should be more than 400 different words and 230syllables in a test paper ; 5) in test paper, there should not be same word in the 1 st and2nd section; the words with several pronunciations should be avoided in the 1stsection ;there should not be excessive same words in the 3rd section; the two optional testquestions in the 4th section should be much different ; the 3rd section should notenlighten the 4th section.