As a tool for examining the quality and outcome of college English teaching and learning,College English Test Band Six(CET-6)has always been given a great priority.It is a high-stake,large-scaled,criterion-related examination which is designed to check the English proficiency level of non-English majors at tertiary institutions in China.Most of universities and colleges in China place a great emphasis on CET-6 since the passing rate of this test was closely related to the evaluation of educational quality of auniversity and the students’ job-hunting.CET-6 has undergone some changes,especially in the listening comprehension section since 2006.The major changes of listening comprehension are the increase in scoring weight from the previous 20% to the current 40%,use of longer conversations,and adoption of compound dictation.These changes,in fact,raise the validity of listening comprehension,motivate the students to prepare for the test actively and stimulate them to use English comprehensively as well.Based on the revision,it is also indispensable to investigate whether the revised test is valid before its administration since the teaching syllabus and the testing syllabus have also been revised accordingly.Weir(2005)states that “The more fullywe are able to describe the construct we are attempting to measure at the a priori stage,the more meaningful might be the statistical procedures contributing to constructvalidation that can subsequently be applied to the results of the test.”That is to say,a priori validation is necessary for a test in order to ensure the validity and usefulness after the test is administered.By reviewing previous studies on validity of CET-6 Listening Comprehension,it is found that most of them concentrated on CET-6 before the8 revision,the studies on the validity of CET-6 listening comprehension after revision were rare,especially a priori validity.Based on such situation,an investigation into a priori validity to evaluate the validity before the test administrationis becoming more and more urgent.The present study attempts to explore a priori validity of Listening Comprehension in CET-6,with the focus on the validation of the teaching syllabus and the testing syllabus of CET-6 as well as the correspondence between the two syllabi.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted in the research.79 students and 35 teachers in a university of Shanxi province participated in this experiment.The views of the teachers and students on teaching syllabus and CET-6 testing syllabus are investigated by means of questionnaires.And students’ practical needs of English are investigated by interviews.Besides,the analysis of testing syllabus is conducted based on Weir’s Framework for Validating Listening Tests.The findingsfrom the research reveals thatspecifications and requirements of the teaching syllabus establish an optimal context for validity of CET-6 since it is rooted in student’s real-life English use situations and practical needs outside the classroom settings and these learning conditions are conducive to meeting the objectives of the teaching syllabus.In addition,the testing syllabus of CET-6 possesses fairly high validity and is in alignment with teaching syllabus in terms of the topics,genres,speech rate,objectives as well as the listening skills.The results contribute to a better understanding of the two syllabi and CET-6 before its administration.However,the two syllabi offer only broad categories of genres and listening skills,which should be improved later.Based on the study,practical suggestions and implications for both methodology and practical teaching and learning are identified.Methodologically,this research is likely to give some implications to the studies of validity of other types of tests.Practically,the present study might shed some light on the design of CET-6 Listening Comprehension for the test designers as well as English teaching and learning.However,the two syllabi offer only broad categories of genres and listening skills,rather than detailed ones,which should be improved in the future. |