A Study On Content Validity Of CET-4 Listening Comprehension(2017-2019)

College English Test Band 4 is a large-scale criterion test,and millions of college students flock to take the exam every year.However,since the reform of removing short conversations and dictation parts and adding news reports in 2016,few studies on the content validity of listening comprehension after 2016 can be found.This thesis aims to find whether test papers conform to the stipulations in the Testing Syllabus(2016)and the Curriculum Requirements(2007),that is,to explore the content validity of listening comprehension.Through the analysis,the author hopes to provide beneficial advice for those students who are struggling to improve listening ability and teachers who are responsible for teaching college English.Therefore,the following research was conducted:First,based on the framework of task characteristics proposed by Bachman and Palmer(1996),the author established the framework of task characteristics of CET-4 listening comprehension combining with the testing syllabus and curriculum requirements.Then,the author analyzed the input(length,speed,readability,the ratio of new words,and topic distribution),the expected response(listening skills coverage),and the relationship between input and response of the test papers from June 2017 to June 2019,10 test papers in total.Besides,two specialists in language testing were invited to judge the subjective data results,such as topic distribution and listening skills coverage.In the final stage,the author conducted a questionnaire with the subject of students and teachers respectively,intending to get a comprehensive understanding of the content validity of CET-4 listening comprehension from students’ and teachers’ perspectives.One hundred and thirty-seven students were randomly chosen from 2564 non-English majors of junior year.Forty-four college teachers who taught College English Listening Course from the whole country gave their opinions on the questionnaire.The result demonstrated that listening comprehension of CET-4 has high content validity:(1)the readability of long conversations conforms to the requirements in the testing syllabus;(2)topics are of sufficient variety,and the topics of long conversations are quite familiar to students;(3)the background knowledge for completing the task is known to students or provided in listening material;(4)length of long conversation and passage perfectly meets the stipulations in the testing syllabus and curriculum requirements;(5)speed fluctuates within the reasonable range.However,some aspects need revising.(1)new words: there are indeed some new words appearing in listening material,which should be avoided;(2)the distribution of listening skills coverage ought to be more balanced;(3)readability: the readability of the first test paper should be consistent with that of the second test paper;(4)length: length of news reports highly exceeds the stipulated number of words.Questionnaires for students and teachers showed that a better ideal item is the speaker’s intonation,and the less than ideal items are the familiarity degree of listening topic and content,especially of news reports,embodying students’ lack of background knowledge of news reports.