A Validity Study On Listening Comprehension In College English Achievement Test

With the increasing demand of college students' listening ability,the National College English Testing Committee made adjustments to the listening comprehension in June 2016 to improve the validity of the listening tests.Based on the framework of test task characteristics put forward by Bachman & Palmer,and according to the requirements of College English Syllabus and Test Syllabus,this paper conducted a validity study on the listening comprehension of a college English achievement test from the perspective of content validity and concurrent validity.First,according to the practical needs,the author revised the framework of test task characteristics for the listening comprehension of a college English achievement test,and then used it to make an analysis of the task characteristics of the listening comprehension of a college English achievement test in July 2017.The analysis data were compared with the CET-4 Syllabus and Test Syllabus to verify the consistency between the contents of the test paper and the syllabus.In order to make the results more objective,the listening scores of the college English achievement test in July 2017 and CET-4's listening scores in June 2017 were also analyzed by SPSS software from the concurrent validity perspective,and the correlation coefficient between this listening test score and the criterion score(i.e.the CET-4 listening score)was obtained(r=0.549).The results show that the listening test of this university is consistent with the Syllabus in terms of speech speed,genre,topic coverage,length and difficulty,and listening skills are basically covered.The correlation analysis indicates that the listeningcomprehension of this test paper has practical relevance to that of the CET-4,so it is valid.The purpose of this study is to provide some references for scholars engaged in validity research and teaching management departments,and also for the quality control of college English teaching.