National Matriculation English Test remains to be improved

National Matriculation English Test remains to be improved

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Abstract: National Matriculation English Test is one of the most important and influential tests in China, many students in China expect to change their fates by taking this test. Students, parents and the whole society expect much of the reliability and validity of this test. Besides, the reliability and validity of NMET can be guaranteed only when the construction and content of the test are fair and scientific. As for these aspects, much remains to be done. This thesis takes the papers of Jiangsu province and points out what should be taken into consideration in selecting reading and writing materials.

Personally such an influential national test should not only be valid and reliable, but also should be fair to every candidate and have beneficial backwash effect on middle school English teaching and learning . It should be a guide to middle school teachers and students instead of misleading or confusing English teachers and students. As far as its validity and guidance are concerned, more efforts should be made in constructing tests to ensure content validity in reading and writing.

As a national or provincial test (now many provinces like Jiangsu, Anhui  etc. have their own independent papers ), NMET must be fair to everybody, so its content shouldn’t bias any particular group or area. Generally, sex, race , region must be taken into account in the process of selecting  reading materials. In other words, the content of the reading materials should be connected with students’ life and universal; they shouldn’t be too manly or too womanly, too northern or too southern , or biased a particular ethnic group. To be exact, if the content of the selected passage are familiar to a particular group,  these candidates can work out the answers easily according to their general knowledge without fully understanding the reading passage, while the group who are very unfamiliar with the topic may spend much time figuring out the answers. For example, if a reading passage is about the introduction of a plant or an animal that is only native to the northern or southern  areas, then the candidates from the north or the south will be more confident and can get answers more easily based on their common sense, but the candidates from the south will be at a disadvantage. Besides, the reading materials shouldn’t have close connection with a specific field. For instance, students of science are sure to be better at understanding a passage of physical or chemical experiment, while a passage about history are more favored by students of arts. In this case, test bias will arise and validity will be weaken.

Another aspect that needs improving ,in my opinion , is writing in NEMT. In recent years, there is a tendency that hot issues have got a place in NEMT. I would like to take  Jiangsu NEMT as an example, the writing of 2005 is “A letter to High School Students in Jiangsu”, which centers around harmonious society, which is the main aim of our government . As for 2006, it is “Dos and Don’ts for the 2008 Olympic Volunteers” based on a report that 100,000 people will be chosen as volunteers for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. And the writing of 2007 is about a national student sports program advocated by the Ministry of Education on the morning of April 29,2007. All these topics are related to hot issues or current affairs of the year . The designs of the writing themselves have no problem, but they bring much trouble and confusion to middle school English teachers and students. On my part, English tests are not politics tests which traditionally focus on current affairs and hot issues of the times. Even if we should keep up with the times, our aim is to test students’ English writing ability,or rather, according to the teaching syllabus, to test students’ ability to express themselves clearly and correctly  in certain given situations by using certain vocabulary, grammar and sentence patterns. But if examiners concentrate too much on current affairs, students who are interested in current affairs or those who happen to have read an English version of this issue will certainly gain an advantage over other candidates. As a result, the construct validity will be weakened. Besides, the tendency of  writing about hot issues also have harmful backwash effect on English teaching and learning. Teachers dare not risk giving up a hot topic , and assign students one exercise after another related to hot issues. Students also show great interest in hot issues and constantly and anxiously  ask teachers about the expressing of some hot issues. It seems that both teachers and students are eager to predict the testing content of the exam, and they are  just trying to find a shortcut， which has a harmful backwash on both learning and teaching.

On the one hand, in order to help students get good results in the college entrance exam, teachers try to teach what is related to or good to college entrance exam, and ignore or leave out what has nothing to do with this exam but may be beneficial to students’ future English learning or all-round development. If teachers can not predict the content of the test, teachers will follow the teaching syllabus and help students cover more aspects rather than take the shortcut. On the other hand , there is also some possibility for some students who don’t work hard at English in their daily study to get good results in the college entrance exam if they work hard in the last two or three months, which leaves students an impression that English can be learned well in a very short time without much effort.  It will make it more difficult for English teachers to persuade students to work hard at English in Senior Grade One or Two. What’s more, similar mechanic exercises can even make both students and teachers sick. The following is my personal experience. When 2008 NMET was approaching, students are forced to do papers flooded with Olympic Games and snow disaster and so on. We even got a paper serving as an exchange paper made by a famous school focusing on different aspects of the 2008 Olympic Games from multiple choice to cloze, reading and writing including the origin and shape of the Olympic torch, torch bearers, the route of the torch relay and so on. This phenomenon arises in that the past exams have such a tendency.

On my part, the purpose of the NMET is to help universities or our nation to select talents. Recently, NMET of many areas have a trend that candidates good at English can’t get very good results and students poor at English will not get very low scores. They are not good at distinguishing students of different English level. Can such tests realize the goal of the NMET ? Test exercises should be new . Can’t it be designed new in nature not in form?