Test Review of the College English Test in China

General description

The National College English Test (CET) is a national level large-scale standardized English test

for non-major College students in China. The first CET test was administered in 1987 and had

100,000 test-takers, but the number has increased to nearly 10 million in 2017 (Gu, 2018). With

this number, CET has become the largest EFL test in the world for non-native English speakers.

Test purpose

The purpose of the CET is to promote English teaching and improve English teaching quality in

colleges in China, and to evaluate the English Proficiency of undergraduate students (non-

English majors) according to the requirements specified in the National College English

Teaching Syllabuses.

Length and administration

The CET is administered by the National College English Testing Committee (NCETC) on

behalf of the Ministry of Education, China. It is held twice a year in June and December. The test

takes 125 minutes to complete. The CET-SET (Spoken English Test) is also held twice a year in

May and November, and the test takers must have passed either CET-4 with a minimum score of

550 or CET-6 with a score of 520 to qualify for the test. The CET-SET lasts approximately 10

minutes.

Structure

The CET consists of four parts: writing (15%), listening comprehension (35%), reading

comprehension (35%), and translation (15%).

1
Scoring

The total score of CET is 710 with four subscores: listening comprehension (249 points, 35%),

reading comprehension (249 points, 35%), writing and translation (212 points, 30%). There’s no

official standard passing score , but most universities and employers accept a score of 425 as

passing (Gu, 2018).

Author/publisher

National College English Testing Committee Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200030,

China Tel: +86-21-52583311 www.cet.neea.edu.net

Price

RMB35.00 for CET-4 and RMB37.00 for CET-6

Appraisal of the CET

The following appraisal of the CET is based on the principles of language assessment (Brown,

2019) in terms of practicality, reliability, validity, and authenticity.

Practicality

Brown (2019) refers practicality as to “the logistical, down-to-earth, administrative issues

involved in making, giving, and scoring an assessment instrument” (P28). The practicality of

CET is a strong standpoint for the test. The test has over 30 years of history and is administered

twice a year in June and December in most universities in China. All undergraduate students who

have completed the related College English courses can register for the test on the CET official

website (www.cet.neea.edu.cn) and test results will be released on the website approximately 8

weeks (2 months) after the test. The test-takers complete the test within appropriate time

2
constraints (125 minutes). The test is described as a “criterion-related norm-referenced test”

(Syllabus for College English Test, P9). It has a long established scoring and grading system

based on the pre-determined norm (Yang and Jin, 2001).

Reliability

“A reliable test is consistent and dependable.” (Brown 2019, P29) The same test should yield

similar results on multiple administrations to the same student or similar level of students. The

reliability of a test could be affected by the test-takers, the test administration, the test itself and

the scoring (raters) (Brown, 2019). To achieve the reliability of CET and to meet the professional

quality expectations of a large-scale standardized test, the CET committee has established

regulations for the test, which are included but not limited to the following:

 “Objectivity and consistency in the marking and scoring;

 Positive backwash effect on the teaching and learning;

 Comparability and interpretability of test results;

 Fairness of test administration conditions;

 Rigor and efficiency in test administration. ” (Jin and Yang, 2006)

Validity

“Validity is the most complex criterion of an effective test and arguably the most important

principle” (Brown, 2019). Gronlund (1998) defined validity as “the extent to which inferences

made from assessment results are appropriate, meaningful, and useful in terms of the purpose of

the assessment.” To examine the validity of the CET, we will first take a look at the history of

the CET. The CET was first designed and developed by the NCETC in the late 1980’s to

evaluate if the students in Colleges meet the English proficiency requirements specified in the

3
National College English Teaching Syllabus (NCETS, 1985, revised in 1999) (Jin and Yang,

2006). The first test was administered in 1987 and has gone through three phases in the

following 20 years. In the first phase (1987 to 1997), the fundamental components of the test

were laid out. In the second phase (1997 to 2005), the test format was changed. The CET-SET

was first introduced in 1999. The third phase (2005-2006) marked the further changes in the test

content, formats, and scoring system. In 2006, the new CET was administered throughout China

(Zheng and Cheng, 2008).

In mid 1990s, a three-year of Sino-British joint research project - “ The CET validation Study”

was conducted by a research group led by Yang and Weir (1998). The research group

investigated the content validity, construct validity, criterion validity, consequential and face

validity of the CET. The study was done through questionnaire survey, introspection study,

parallel tests administration, and statistical analysis of enormous data (Jin and Yang, 2006). The

result of the study has given an overview of the validity evidence for all sections of the CET in

its first phase and caused changes to the test format in the second phase (Zheng and Cheng,

2008).

As reported by Yang (2000), to achieve content validity, the CET committee has drawn up

detailed test specification and devised test items to cover different content areas. Upon an

analysis of over 300 reading items in the previous test paper, the statistics showed that all

contents specified in the test specification were fully covered by the test items. To achieve

criterion validity, they performed a comparison of 50 universities English teachers’ ranking of

1,186 students’ English proficiency level to their CET-4 test scores. Yang reported that the

discriminant validity index was 0.82, which indicated the CET test results were consistent with

the predetermined norm-reference (Zheng and Cheng, 2008). The latest Consequential Validity

4
(Impact) study of the CET was conduct by Ren in 2011. The study employed survey research,

questionnaires and interviews to collect data from five universities in Tianjin city, China.

Thirtyfive teachers and 210 students were surveyed with questionnaires, and 22 teachers and 30

students were interviewed (Ren, 2011). The data collected from this study showed a very

interesting result that had not been studied in the previous study of validity. The data from the

teachers showed that 60% perceive the test focusing mainly on linguistic forms and 68.6% claim

it failed to measure real-life language skills. 49% agreed the test as a whole failed to reflect the

students’ English proficiency and 42.9% disagreed. The data collected from the students showed

similar results: 57% perceived the test put linguistic forms as its priority and 71% thought it

failed to test real-life skills. 64.3% students agreed it failed to reflect their English proficiency,

and 56.7% agreed it failed to develop their real-life language skills. From this study, we can

conclude that the consequential validity or face validity of the CET from the aspect of teachers

and students are questionable. And the interesting thing from this study shows that the

authenticity of the test is brought up to the attention of the educators and learners that was

neglected before.

Authenticity

Brown identifies an authentic test as containing language that is natural, including linguistic

items in context, including meaningful, relevant, interesting topics, and offering tasks that

replicate real-world tasks (Brown, P39). The data from the Ren’s study indicated that both

educators and students view CET failed to measure or help to develop real-life language skill

(Ren, 2011). I studied a set of CET-4 and CET-6 previous test papers in light of the definition of

authenticity by Brown. In the writing section of CET-4, the students were required to write a

short essay on How to get along with your classmates. In CET-6, the topic was “ The benefits of

5
WeChat and offer your advice on how to use it properly” (WeChat is a popular social media app

that is used by everyone in China and most Chinese overseas). Judged from the topic alone, both

writing tests were meaningful, relevant, and interesting, and should be categorized as authentic.

Upon studying the Listening Comprehension Section of CET-4 and CET6, I would say that this

section was a mixture of authentic and unauthentic. The conversation part and news report part

were natural and relevant and the lecture or recording part could be irrelevant and unappealing to

the test-takers. The Reading Comprehension Section yielded the same result as a mixture of

authentic and unauthentic. However, the translation section was absolutely irrelevant, unnatural,

boring, and have no connection whatsoever to real-life tasks. Overall, my conclusion regarding

the authenticity of CET by studying the test paper is similar to the result of data analysis

conducted by Ren. However, please be noted that I have only studied a set of CET test paper and

this conclusion might not apply to all CET tests.

Conclusion

To sum up, CET is a practical, considerably reliable, and valid test. However, its authenticity and

impact or effective washback to teaching and learning is questionable. Because CET score is

widely used as a benchmark for degree, admission of graduate program and employment etc., a

negative washback of the CET could be teaching to test or learning to test.

6
 References

Ren, Y. (2011). A study of the washback effects of the College English Test (band 4) on teaching

and learning English at tertiary level in China. International journal of pedagogies and

learning, 6(3), 243-259.

Gu, M. (2018). An introduction to China’s college English test (CET). World Education News

and Reviews.

Yan, J., & Huizhong, Y. (2006). The English proficiency of college and university students in

China: As reflected in the CET. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(1), 21-36.

Zheng, Y., & Cheng, L. (2008). Test review: college English test (CET) in China. Language

Testing, 25(3), 408-417.

Brown, H.D. & Abeywickrama, P. (2019). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom

Practices. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.