1. College English Test Band 4 (CET-4) in China: A Historical Overview
The 4th Untested Ideas (UI) International Research Conference
Xingxing Mao
MA Student in Language Testing
Hunan University, China

2. Outline 1 2 3 4 5 Introduction Historical Development of CET-4
Results and Discussion
Conclusion
References 1 2 3 4 5

3. 1
Introduction

4. A Brief Introduction to CET-41
A Brief Introduction to CET-4
The College English Test Band 4, also known as CET-4, is a national large-scale standardized test administered by the Higher Education Department of the Chinese Ministry of Education. It aims to provide an objective and accurate assessment about the English proficiency of Chinese college students as well as information for the improvement of college English teaching. Developed by the National College English Test Band 4&6 Committee which is composed of professors and experts from Chinese key universities, this test includes two forms: paper test and oral test. Both of them are held twice a year, but the former is in June and December, respectively, while the latter is in May and November every year. This test is both criterion-referenced and norm-referenced in nature. All the undergraduate and postgraduate students at universities and colleges can take the test.

5. A Brief Introduction to CET-41
A Brief Introduction to CET-4
In China, CET-4 has been widely accepted as an examination with high reliability and validity, reflecting whether the college students have reached the language level specified in the National College English Teaching Syllabus (Sun & Henrichsen, 2011).
Importance: a prerequisite for getting the bachelor’s degree
a necessity for applying for a job
Considering the great significance, influences and wide participation, it’s of great importance to build up a more perfect assessment system for CET-4 so that it can be reliable and scientific as possible as it can. That’s exactly what language and assessment experts in China aim to do in the past, at present and in the future. Reviewing the historical development of CET-4 can help us know about their efforts.

6. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4

7. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Stage 1: September, June, 1995
First administered in September 1987, the original CET-4 is characterized by: Frequency& Time: twice a year, i.e., January and June, respectively
Form: paper test
Type: norm-referenced test
Components of the test: listening, reading, vocabulary & structure, cloze, writing
Total score: 108 points
Scoring System: full score is converted into 100 points with norm-referenced Mean=72, SD= points is set as the standard of pass.
Two types of certificate: fair (60~84) & excellent(≥ 85) (Aiping Guo, 2006)
Participants: anyone who has taken the required English courses, including university students or social examinees studying at night school

8. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Section
Content
Item format
Time
Score weight
Listening Comprehension
Short Conversation
Multiple-choice
20 minutes
20%
Short Passage
Reading comprehension
Passage
35 minutes
40%
Vocabulary and structure
Vocabulary & grammar
15%
Cloze
15 minutes
10%
Writing
Passage writing
30 minutes
Total
120 minutes
100%
Table 1: The components of CET-4 test from

9. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
A sample of the Certificate of CET-4

10. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Stage 2: January, June,1999
In 1996, the Higher Education Department of the Chinese Ministry of Education released a notice entitled “About the pilot reform of college English teaching in eight universities ”(Guān Yú Bā Suǒ Gāo Xiào Jìn Xíng Dà Xué Yīng Yǔ Jiào Xué Shì Diǎn Gǎi Gé Dē Tōng Zhī in Chinese), aiming to encourage the reform of teaching objective, approach, content and the assessment method. Influenced by this notice, CET-4 began to add new exam patterns into the test in order to improve its validity. Compared with the old form, the new form can better measure the English proficiency of test takers to some degree by increasing the proportion of subjective items.

11. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Section
Content
Item format
Time
Score weight
Listening Comprehension
Short Conversation
Multiple-choice
20 minutes
20%
Short Passage
Multiple-choice/ compound dictation
Reading comprehension
Passage
35 minutes
40%
Vocabulary and structure
Vocabulary & Grammar
15%
Translation /
short answer questions/cloze
Sentence translation/
passage /cloze
English to Chinese translation/ question answer or sentence completion/multiple-choice
15 minutes
10%
Writing
Passage writing
30 minutes
Total
120 minutes
100%
Table 2: The components of CET-4 test from

12. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Stage 3: November, June, 2005
In November, 1999, the National College English Test Band 4&6 committee began to implement CET-Spoken English Test (CET-SET) in some cities. This represents that CET-4 has developed into a relatively perfect new stage and it can assess the college students’ listening, speaking, reading and writing comprehensively (Huizhong Yang, 2003). With more and more provinces involved in the oral test since then, CET-SET became more widely accepted. The number of students who participate in it is also growing every year.
For the paper test, “parallel test” (A & B paper) was adopted from January, A paper and B paper are the same except in the order of items.

13. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
CET-SET
Qualification: examinees whose score is higher than 80 in paper test
Form : face to face (two examiners vs. three or four examinees)
Frequency & time: twice a year, i.e. May and December respectively
Section
Format
Process
Time
Score
Part 1
Question & answer
Self-introduction or answering the question asked by the examiners
5 minutes
5 points
Part 2
Individual presentation & group discussion
Make a brief presentation based on the given instruction;
Discuss in group on the given topic;
10 minutes
Part 3
Answer the questions asked by the examiners
Total
20 minutes
15 points
Table 3 : The contents of CET-SET

14. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Level
Ability description
Score A
Can communicate orally on familiar topics in English with little difficulty B
Can communicate orally on the familiar topics in English, although with some difficulty, but it doesn’t influence the communication. C
Can have simple oral communication on familiar topics in English
8-10.9 D
Have no oral communication competence in English yet
≤7.9
Table 4 : The level standard of CET-SET
Grade reporting：test takers above Level C will get a certificate of CET Spoken English Test issued by the Higher Education Department of the Chinese Ministry of Education in corresponding level

15. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
A sample of the certificate of CET-SET

16. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Another change of CET-4 is the grade reporting. To explain the whole English proficiency level of the college students’, the National College English Test Band 4&6 committee started to report “the average grade-point”(G), which can not only show the cumulative percent of pass but also the level of students who have passed the test. It encourages universities and colleges pay attention to the improvement of students’ English proficiency instead of being only satisfied with the percent of pass.
G = ( S G i / N ) ×
G i : the grade-point of No.i examinee
N：The total number of students in the community which the examinees belong to, eg. university, province or even the nation
Furthermore , CET-4 began to set the lowest mark of writing.
If one’s writing score is “0”, then he/she will fail the exam, even if the original total points is above 60
If one’s writing score is “0~6”, then the final reporting grade will be “original score －6 ＋writing score”

17. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Stage 4: January, June, 2012
On 25th February, 2005, the Ministry of Education of China published The Reform Scheme of National College English Test Band 4 and 6. According to the scheme, CET-4 would be adopt a totally different form. The new type of CET-4 will be held in some experimental universities of college English teaching reform in January and June, But all the universities in China must adopt the newly-reformed CET-4 test from January, The changes can be stated from the following aspects:
Scoring System
In the new type of scoring system, the full score would become 710 and examinees’ original mark will be converted into the normal-distributed score with norm-referenced Mean=500,SD=70 through scoring weighting and equating.

18. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Grade Reporting
Instead of the certificate, a score report will be sent to every test taker whose grade is between 220 and 710, including the total score and score in every part of the test. Besides, the committee will also provide explanation of students’ score to universities.
Management system
From June, 2005, the Ministry of Education would use the new test registration and management system that would restrict the qualification of test takers. All the social examinees, such as those study at night school, are not entitled to take CET-4 exam any more from January 2007 nationwide. Some areas even began to carry out this new policy from January, 2006.
TotSco: reporting points X: original total points

19. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Management system
In June, 2007, CET-Online marking was put into practice
In December, 2008, the Internet-based CET-4 began to be experimented in some area.
A sample of the score report

20. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Test content
Section
Content
Item format
Time
Score weight
Listening Comprehension
Conversation
short
Multiple-choice
35 minutes
15%
35%
long
Passage
Passage understanding
20%
Passage dictation
Compound dictation
Reading comprehension
Reading in depth 25
minutes
40 minutes
25%
Banked cloze
Fast reading (skimming & scanning)
T or F 15
10%
sentence completion

21. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Test content
Section
Content
Item format
Time
Score weight
Comprehensive test
Cloze/Proof-reading
Multiple-choice /
Identify & correct errors
15 minutes
10%
15%
Question & Answer / Translation
Short answer/
Chinese to English Translation of the given part in sentences
5 minutes 5%
Writing
Passage writing
30 minutes
Total
125 minutes
100%
Table 5: The components of CET-4 test from

22. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Structure of the test paper
New
Old
Part Ⅰ
Writing
Listening Comprehension
Part Ⅱ
Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)
Reading Comprehension
Part Ⅲ
Listing Comprehension
Vocabulary and Structure
Part Ⅳ
Reading Comprehension (reading in depth)
Cloze
Part Ⅴ
Part Ⅵ
Translation
Table 6: Test structure of CET-4
Test time: twice a year, in June and December respectively
CET-SET Participants: examinees whose score is above 550.
Parallel test was cancelled from December, 2010

23. Historical Development of CET-42
Stage 5: December, December 2015
From December, 2012, CET-4 changed the exam pattern again. To prevent cheating, parallel test were put into practice again. That is, students in the same exam room will get different test paper randomly based on the seat number. These papers are identical in the number and form of items, but different in the specific content of items. The new pattern further increases the credibility of CET-4.
In 14th August, 2013, the National College English Test Band 4&6 committee released a notice about the adjustment of the question types of CET-4. It’s informed that CET-4&6 would adopt the same pattern from the test in December, 2013.
The adjustment of qualification for CET-SET: score ≥ 500
note: The test taken by examinees must be in or after June, 2005
The National College English Test Band 4&6 committee announced in April, 2015 that the internet-based CET-4 would be cancelled since after.

24. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Section
Content
Item format
Time
Score weight
Writing
Passage writing
30 minutes
15%
Listening comprehension
Conversation
Short
Multiple-choice 8%
35%
Long 7%
Passage
Passage understanding
10%
Passage dictation
Compound dictation
Reading comprehension
Vocabulary understanding
Word-choosing
40 minutes 5%
Long passage
Matching
Reading in depth
20%
Translation
Passage translation
Chinese to English translation
Total
130 minutes
100%
Table 7: The components of CET-4 from

25. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Stage 7: June Now
In order to adapt to the new requirements of the society to college students’ listening ability and further increase the validity of the listening test, the National College English Test Band 4&6 committee decide to make local adjustment to the listening comprehension part since June, 2016.
In addition to the adjustment in listening, the CET-SET has also been divided into two levels: CET-SET4 and CET-SET6, which will be held separately. The original CET-SET will be grouped into CET-SET6.
Form of CET-SET 4: computer-assisted test

26. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Section
Content
Item format
Time
Score weight
Writing
Passage writing
30 minutes
15%
Listening comprehension
Short News
Multiple-choice 7%
35%
Long conversation 8%
Passage
20%
Reading comprehension
Vocabulary
Word-choosing
40 minutes 5%
Long passage
Matching
10%
Reading in depth
Translation
Passage translation
Chinese to English translation
Total
130 minutes
100%
Table 8: The components of CET-4 test from 2016

27. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Section
Task
Process
Time 1
Self-introduction
Make a brief introduction
20 seconds 2
Read aloud
Read a 200- word passage
1 minute for reading
45 seconds for preparation 3
Question & answer
Answer 2 questions related to the passage
40 seconds 4
Individual presentation
Make a presentation according to the given instruction
1 minute for presentation 5
Pair work
Communicate with your partner according to the given situation & task
3 minutes for pair work
1 minute for preparation
Total
10 minutes
Table 9: The content of CET-SET 4

28. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Level
Description of ability level A
Can communicate orally on the familiar topics in English with little difficulty
Can express the opinions or ideas on familiar topics
Can describe a general phenomenon or event very fluently and clearly B
Can communicate orally on the familiar topics in English, although with some difficulty, but it doesn’t influence the communication.
Can give a coherent speech on familiar topics
Can describe a general phenomenon or event quiet clearly and fluently C
Can have simple oral communication on familiar topics
Can give a brief speech on familiar topics
Can simply narrate or describe a general phenomenon or event D
Have no basic oral communication competence in English yet
Table 10 :The description of ability level in CET-SET4

29. Historical Development of CET-42
Historical Development of CET-4
Grade reporting:
Examinees whose level is D or above will receive a score report, which can be sent by mail or picked up by oneself.
Qualification for CET-SET 4:
Score ≥425
note: the test taken by examinees must be in or after June, 2012
Trend: the standard is lowered to a great extent.
Purpose: to extend the range of students who can take the test so that they can better understand their language proficiency and make improvement.

30. 3
Results and Discussion

31. Results and Discussion3
Results and Discussion
Form the different development stages of CET-4, it can be seen that this test has changed greatly in the following aspects:
Test content
the diversification of test format by the use of new question types, eg. compound dictation & news listening, word-choosing & matching, T or F, sentence completion, short answer questions and translation
increase of subjective items, such as the proportion of translation has been increased from 5% to 15% and the percentage of listening comprehension has been raised from 20% to 35% because of the addition of compound dictation
The structure of the test paper
change in the order of different question types
Listening Reading Vocabulary & Structure Cloze/Translation Writing

32. Results and Discussion3
Results and Discussion
Listening Reading Comprehensive Test Writing
Writing Listening Reading Translation
Test type
Paper test paper test together with CET-SET paper test together with CET-SET4
Test pattern
The same test paper two sets of test paper three sets of test paper
Scoring system
100 mark system mark system, both are norm-referenced
60 is pass and 85 is excellent is pass
Grade reporting
Before 2005: certificate two levels: fair & excellent

33. Results and Discussion3
Results and Discussion
After 2005: score report consisted of the total points together with the separate points in every part of the test (220~ 710), no matter whether one pass the exam or not
Score explanation
Before 2005, only the reported score is analyzed and the universities only pay attention to the pass-out rate without considering the differences of students’ language proficiency.
After 2005, the committee provides a norm-referenced percentile comparison table in which one can find his/her position compared to the norm-referenced group according to the reporting score
Test time
Date: January & June June & December
Length: 120 minutes minutes minutes

34. Results and Discussion3
Results and Discussion
Participants
The range of students who can take the test is narrowed down.
Social examinees and college students only college students
CET-SET
Form: face to face computer-assisted
Qualification: score ≥ 80(old) or 550(new) score ≥ 425
Grade reporting:
Old: those who is in or above level C will receive a certificate
New: those who is in or above level D will receive a score report
Method of marking
Manually Computer-assisted

35. Results and Discussion3
Results and Discussion
To summarize, the general trend of reforms in CET-4 shows that this test has become more reliable, valid and scientific with a relatively well-established system than before under the influences of modern assessment theories. Instead of only focusing on the development of grammatical knowledge in English, CET-4 nowadays is paying more and more attention to language use ability in real situations. In addition, the method of assessing college students’ language proficiency has become more varied.
The reason why CET-4 has such changes can be attributed to the requirements of the society. Compared to 30 years ago when CET-4 was established for the first time, English language use ability becomes increasingly important in society because of the international communication in various fields. Thus English teaching has to adjust its focus in order to meet the needs. As CET-4 servers for English teaching, it’s inevitable that this test has also changed in this direction.

36. 4
Conclusion

37. 4
Conclusion
Just as any other type of large-scale standardized test whose development is a process of reform and improvement, CET-4 is of no exception. After nearly 30 years of development, this test has become more adaptive, scientific and reliable under the guidance of modern language assessment theories. The practice of the newly-reformed CET-4 can provide positive feedback to college English teaching which then helps to improve the quality of English teaching so that the objectives of college English teaching can be better achieved. However, it’s undeniable that CET-4 still has a lot to be improved, such as the poor privacy of exam papers, the existence of unfairness caused by the poor quality of test items and the lack of systematicity in reform. So we should have a clear mind that there’s still a long way to go to make CET-4 a perfect test to assess college students’ English proficiency and serve for English teaching.

38. 5
References

39. 5
References
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CET-4 英语四级考试网
全国大学英语四、六级考试官网

40. Thank You!