| This study was undertaken to find out what test-taking strategies successful test-takers employed before and during CET-6.The subjects in this study were three sophomores in College of Engineering at Yangzhou University. Two girls majoring in Information Management were labeled as S1and S2and a boy majoring in Software Engineering was labeled as S3. They passed CET-4in December,2009scoring574,540and586respectively, and CET-6in June,2010scoring522,530and543respectively, which means they passed the two tests the first time they took them and got fairly good marks. The instrument of the study was the researcher herself according to Chen (2000). In order to be qualified for the interviews, the researcher first familiarized herself with the specific procedures of the interview by reading relevant books and carried out a pilot study to anticipate the problems that might come up so that they could be avoided in the formal interview. The interviews covered the two aspects:test-taking strategies employed by successful CET-6takers before CET-6and during CET-6. The interviews were conducted in Chinese in a daily conversational style to make both the subjects and the researcher herself express ideas freely. With the interviewees’ permission, the two interviews were recorded and then transcribed. Data analysis involved coding, categorization and translation.This study has generated three major findings:First, the test-taking strategies employed before CET-6have both their own characteristics and common ground. In terms of review, strategies differ from person to person. S1employs overall-reviewing strategy; S2, more-effort-into-the-weak-items strategy and S3,more-effort-into-reading strategy, which indicates that all roads lead to Rome or there’s more than one way to the square. In terms of mental preparations before CET-6, all of the three students have the same strategies: being-relaxed strategy and being-confident strategy.Second, there are three several-item-universal test-taking strategies during CET-6:eliminating-wrong-answers strategy, reading-the-question-first strategy and skipping strategy. The first one deals with all the multiple-choice questions in Skimming&Scanning, Listening Comprehension, Reading-in-depth and Cloze employed by S2during this CET-6, while S3used this strategy in Skimming&Scanning and Reading-in-depth. The second several-item-universal test-taking strategy deals with Skimming&Scanning by S2and S3, and Listening Comprehension by S3. The third one deals with Listening Comprehension by S1and S2, Reading-in-depth by S1and Skimming&Scanning by S2. This suggests that these strategies serve to kill two or three or even more birds with one stone.Third, there are some item-specific test-taking strategies during CET-6with two prominent items:Writing and Cloze. The strategies for Writing consist of proper-use-of-complicated-sentences strategy, writing-outline strategy, sticking-to-item-requirements strategy and evaluating-argument-&-wording-before/in-writing strategy. The strategies for Cloze are made up of reading-the-whole-passage strategy, relying-on-intuition strategy and paying-attention-to-collocations strategy.This study has three limitations.The first is that there are only three subjects chosen from the same department, which indicates the conclusions may not be generalized to other successful CET-6takers.The second is that categorization of the test-taking strategies is all made by the researcher herself, which cannot guarantee100%objectivity.The third is lack of timeliness. Because the interviews were held nearly three months after the three students took the test, the provided strategies were all recalled from their memory and they might fail to give specific item content as examples to further illustrate how they employed the strategies. |
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