Analysis Of Usefulness In Achievement Tests For English Majors

Achievement test is an important part of English teaching, and it plays animportant role in assessing students’ English learning as well as the effectiveness ofEnglish teaching. It is pointed out in the National Teaching Syllabus for CollegeEnglish Majors that at senior stage of teaching great attention should be paid to thecultivation of the students’ communicative language ability. Therefore, the evaluationof achievement tests should be made not only in terms of reliability, validity andbackwash effect, but also from the perspectives of authenticity and interactiveness.Only in this way can achievement tests perform a better function in cultivating thestudents’ communicative language ability.Therefore this study, based on the theory of Communicative Competence andguided by the principles of “Usefulness” of Communicative Testing, makes a fullanalysis of the usefulness of final tests of Advanced English Course of ZhangzhouNormal University. The method used in this research is a combination of qualitativeand quantitative analysis and priority of the study is given to test paper analysis,assisted by questionnaire survey. Firstly, according to the requirements in the NationalTeaching Syllabus for College English Majors and in the Teaching and TestingSyllabus of Advanced English Course of Zhangzhou Normal University, this researchanalyzes the test content validity of the papers from the view point of contentcorrelation and content coverage. Secondly, this study analyzes and computes thedifficulty of test and test score variance of all items in the papers by using thetechnology of educational statistics and measurement. After that, analysis of thecharacteristics of test tasks of the papers is made by applying the framework of taskcharacteristics proposed by Bachman and Palmer and then the degree of testauthenticity is evaluated through the comparison with the characteristics of targetlanguage use task. In order to analyze the degree of interactiveness between the testtakers and the test tasks, this study focuses on three aspects: the test taker’s languageability, topic knowledge, and affective schemata. Through questionnaire survey, thispaper has collected many opinions and suggestions about achievement test and itsimpact on English teaching and learning from the teachers involved in writing thesetest tasks and the relevant students. Finally, the practicality of the tests is evaluated interms of availability of human and material resources required in the achievementtests.The results obtained from the study show that, for achievement tests to workbetter, test writers should increase the test validity, authenticity, and interactiveness inthe aspects of test content, design of test types, sources and sampling for writing achievement tests. Besides, timely and detailed feedback should be provided for thestudents after the examination so as to promote the positive washback. In the end,based on the analysis and synthesis of the research results and the suggestionsobtained through the questionnaire survey, this study puts forward some suggestionsfor improving achievement tests for English majors from the perspectives of sixqualities of Usefulness of Communicative Test.