Children's Summer School The Chinese Grading Test Design

Under the influence of globalization, China has been frequently exchanging with the world because of her rapid economic development. Chinese language has also become increasingly important in the world. As a result, many children and teenagers come to China to learn Chinese. However, each student's Chinese language level is different. How to decide the level of classes each student should take is thus a problem to be solved. Based on children's traits in learning Chinese language, teaching materials as well as the students'competence in a Chinese language learning program in summer holidays, this paper designed a placement test form. Improvement was made on the basis of the test results as well as some statistic indexes.In the test paper designing, multiple-choice was chosen for most items. Concerning item quantities, there were54items in the first test form,60items in the second and the third test forms, and a writing part is also included. The testing content is based on teaching materials in teaching books such as《汉语会话301句》used in this Chinese learning program. The testing design procedure is as follows:first, listed a basic content outline and a test specification; and then wrote items including listening, vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension and writing parts.In the research, discrimination index D and difficulty index P were used to choose items, and alpha coefficient was used as the reliability index. At the same time, the author observed students'performance in classrooms and asked teachers to evaluate students'performance so as to validate the test forms.As a result, it is found that the alpha coefficients of first two test forms' are quite high. The mean point biserial correlation coefficients of the first two test forms were also high. The third test had only12examinees, and most of them were beginners, therefore the statistics of the third test are not adequate enough to verify the quality of the items.As for the aspect of validity, classroom observation and teachers' evaluation showed that the students'Chinese levels were at a great difference in three test administrations. After three test administrations, most students were placed to suitable classes in this program.After the first and second testing, the researcher assessed the quality of the items and the test forms, and modified some items accordingly. For example, some distracters were replaced and clear pictures were used, and etc.The limitations of this research are as follows:first, the sample is too small, and sometimes the homogeneity of the students is too high; second, oral test is not considered in this research; third, this research is based on classical test theory only. In order to make further improvement on the placement test, research shall be conducted based on the modern measurement theory in the future.