A Contrastive Study On The Validity Of Pinyin And Checklist In Testing Vocabulary Size Of Chinese As A Foreign Language

As an important indicator of language learners’vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary size has been attached great importance in the field of language testing. In the study of English as a Foreign Language, vocabulary size test has tend to mature, however, the study of Chinese as a Foreign Language started comparatively late; so far, relatively few researches can be found in the study of assessing vocabulary of Chinese as a Foreign Language, let alone validation study.There are many test formats currently applied in vocabulary size tests, such as Translation, Multiple Choice, Matching, Checklist, Picture and so on. The two formats selected in this study are Checklist and Pinyin. According to the three dimensions of vocabulary size test, Checklist and Pinyin are instruments that are discrete, selective and context-independent in nature; and they both require least reading, without presenting the meaning directly.A contrastive study on the validity of Pinyin and Checklist is carried out in this thesis based on the evidences from a criterion-related experiment to answer the following four questions:1. Do Pinyin and Checklist pose significantly different effects on vocabulary size test performance of CFL learners?2. Which one gets higher concurrent validity, Pinyin or Checklist? And what are the causes for lower concurrent validity?3. To what extent are Pinyin and Checklist acceptable as measures of vocabulary size of Chinese as a Foreign Language, namely, what about the face validity of Pinyin and Checklist?4. Can Pinyin be an alternative to Checklist?24CFL learners participated in the study; they have learned Chinese for more than one and a half years on average. There are three vocabulary size tests in this study: checklist test, pinyin test and matching test. Matching is a valid measure of vocabulary size of Chinese as a Foreign Language and it is also context-independent. As a validation study, this thesis takes the results of matching test as an external validation criterion, and conducts criterion-related validity study. The author collected data of the three tests and the participants’opinions and attitudes toward Pinyin and Checklist in the form of questionnaire.The study results show that, Pinyin and Checklist are both valid measure of assessing vocabulary of Chinese as a Foreign Language, but they do pose significantly different effects on vocabulary size test performance of CFL learners; the difference mainly lies in their performance on the vocabulary of Level Four and Five. The tested words are the same, but Pinyin enjoys more item difficulty, better item discrimination and internal consistency. Correlation analysis with Matching shows that Pinyin possesses higher concurrent validity than Checklist. Participants tend to over-estimate their own vocabulary knowledge in checklist test. And Pinyin is of higher face validity according to the feedback from the questionnaires. Through the contrastive analysis of the experimental data and the comparison of advantages and disadvantages between Pinyin and Checklist, conclusion comes that Pinyin can be an alternative to Checklist.