1、大学英语四六级写作及其写作教学大学英语四六级写作及其写作教学Abstract Writing testing is a kind of integrative testing, which examines students productive skills, receptive skills, as well as the usage of linguistic elements and usage, grammar, etc. Besides, it also tests students competence in organizing, analyzing, expressing,
2、logical thinking, and mastering of various writing styles. Writing tests can test different levels and scopes of a language at a time. Thus, it really represents ones linguistic competence. Its found that Chinese college students English language ability has greatly improved in recent years(from 199
3、2 to 2003). However, the English writing ability is almost stagnant. In order to find out the reasons for this phenomenon, this thesis, based on the previous findings, analyzes the content validity of CET-4/6 writing tests, and compares the scoring criteria of CET-4/6 writing tests with those of Col
4、lege Entrance Examination(CEE) and with Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).The analysis and comparison point out such problems as the content validity, the requirements in the number of words, the form of the proposition, the scoring criteria. The existence of these problems has certain h
5、armful backwash effects on college English writing teaching of college students, for example, the deficiency of the content, the dullness of the writing, etc. In line with the previous findings, the paper proposes some effective suggestions about college English writing test. It is hoped that the pr
6、esent study will be helpful for both college English writing and English teaching. Key Words CET-4/6; writing tests; writing teaching; content validity; backwash effects. 【摘 要】写作测试是一种综合测试，它不仅能考查学生的输出性技能，同时也能考查学生的接收性技能，不仅可以测验学生的词汇、用法、语法等语言要素，也可以测验学生的组织能力、分析能力、表达能力、逻辑推理、对各种语体的掌握等。它能同时测试语言的各个层次和范畴，所以说，
7、写作测试能真正反映一个人的语言能力。 基于近十几年来（1992-2003）的情况调查，我国大学生的英语水平有了很大的提高，但是英语写作能力一直停滞不前。本文就其原因对大学英语四级、六级考试中的写作测试部分的内容效度加以分析，并把写作测试部分的评分标准与高考、美国托福考试等考试中的英语写作的评分标准进行比较之后发现，大学英语四、六级考试的写作测试的内容效度、词数要求、命题形式和评分标准等都存在一定的问题。这对大学生英语写作教学产生了一定的负面影响，同时也暴露了大学生写作中存在的一些普遍问题，例如内容贫乏、语言干瘪等。本文分析了写作测试和写作教学存在的多种问题，并对此提出了一些建议，旨在提高学生的
8、写作能力和改进写作教学。 【关键词】大学英语四、六级考试；写作测试；写作教学；内容效度；后效作用。 1.Introduction In recent years, the college students English ability has apparently improved. However, students have hardly made any progress in English writing ability. The scoring rates in such parts as listening, reading, vocabulary and grammar of
9、 CET-4/6 have gradually increased, but the average marks of the writing part always range from 6 to 7. In order to find out the reasons for the low marks in the writing part, many experts and scholars have done a lot of investigation and research. Some believe that it has something to do with the ex
10、amination-oriented education system which underestimates students writing ability1.Some think that the research of theories on college English writing teaching is not enough. All these analyses have yielded certain positive results. However, they havent integrated testing with teaching organically,
11、proceeding either simply from CET-4/6 or simply from college English writing teaching. This thesis based on a detailed analysis of the content validity and the scoring criteria of writing tests in CET-4/6, points out the harmful backwash effects of CET-4/6 writing tests on college English writing te
12、aching, and provides several useful suggestions on college English writing teaching. 2.Development of Language Testing 2.1 Different approaches to language testing “Carroll(1968) provides the following definition of a test: a psychological or education test is a procedure designed to elicit certain
13、behavior from which one can make inferences about certain characteristics of an individual” . Generally speaking, there are three main periods in the development of language testing: pre-scientific testing, psychometric-structuralist testing, communicative language testing (or psycholinguistic-socio
14、linguistic testing). Accordingly, “there exist four main approaches to language testing: the essay-translation approach, the structuralist approach, the integrative approach, and the communicative approach”. In the pre-scientific stage, people believe that language testing just means checking whethe
15、r or not students have remembered the knowledge of a language. The essay-translation approach is commonly referred to as the pre-scientific stage of language testing. No special skill or expertise in testing is required: the subjective judgment of the teacher is considered to be of paramount importa
16、nce. Tests usually consist of essay writing, translation, and grammatical analysis. The test also have a heavy literary and cultural bias. In 1900s, the structural linguistics and behaviorist psychology occupied the leading position. Structural linguistics believes that language is a system of speec
17、h sounds, arbitrarily assigned to the objects, stated and referred for human communication. The theory of behaviorist psychology is also called S-R theory. It is characterized by emphasis on externally observable response(R) to specific stimuli(S). Behaviorist sees language as a series of learned re
18、sponse to stimuli. Under the influence of the structural linguistics and behaviorist psychology, the psychometric-structuralist testing and the structuralist approach come into being. This approach is characterized by the view that language learning is chiefly concerned with the systematic acquisiti
19、on of a set of habits. It draws on the work of structural linguistics, especially the importance of contrastive analysis and the need to identify and measure the learners mastery of the discrete elements of the target language : phonology, vocabulary and grammar. The skill of listening, speak, readi
20、ng, and writing are also separated from each other as much as possible because it is considered essential to test one thing at a time. As a result, the need for statistical measures of reliability and validity is considered to be of the utmost importance: hence the popularity of the discrete point t
21、esting. Discrete point testing refers to the testing of one element at one time, item by item. Multiple choice is the typical example of it . However, discrete point testing neglects the context and discourse. In the 1970s, people who believe in the unitary competence hypothesis(UCH) advocate the in
22、tegrative approach .This approach involves the testing of language in context and is thus concerned primarily with meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse. Thus, integrative tests are concerned with a global view of proficiency and are often designed to assess the learners ability to
23、 use two or more skills simultaneously. Integrative tests are best characterized by the use of cloze testing and of dictation as well as writing composition, making notes while listening to a lecture, etc. Nowadays, the communicative language testing becomes more and more important and popular. Test
24、ing means not communicative testing of language but the testing of communicative language. Communicative tests are concerned primarily with how language is used in communication. It aims to incorporate tasks which approximate as closely as possible to those facing the students in real life. Success
25、is judged in terms of the effectiveness of the communication which takes place rather than formal linguistic accuracy . 2.2 Relationship between testing and teaching Both language testing and language teaching are based on linguistics and psychology. They followed the disciplinary trends in linguist
26、ic and psychological theories. Both testing and teaching are so closely interrelated that it is virtually impossible to work in either field without being constantly concerned with the other. The proper relationship between testing and teaching is that of partnership. Tests may be constructed primar
27、ily as devices to reinforce learning and to motivate the students or primarily as a means of assessing the students performance in the language. Standardized tests and public examinations, in fact, may exert such a considerable Influence on the average teachers that they are often helpful to decide
28、the kind of teaching that takes place before the tests. Over the years language teachers who want to be able to use tests as part of their classroom teaching. The effect of testing and learning is known as backwash . Backwash can be harmful or beneficial. If a test is regarded as important, the prep
29、aration for it can come to dominate all teaching and learning activities. And if the test content and test techniques are at variance with the objectives of the course, then there is likely to be harmful backwash. If the skill of writing, for example, is tested only by multiple-choice items, then th
30、ere is great pressure to practice such items rather than practice the skill of writing itself. This is clearly undesirable. However, backwash needs not always be harmful; indeed it can be positively beneficial. When the teaching is good and proper, and the testing is not, teaching is then likely to
31、suffer from harmful backwash. When teaching is poor or inappropriate, testing is then able to exert a beneficial backwash. Testing should be supportive of good teaching and , when necessary, exert a corrective influence on bad teaching. If testing always had a beneficial backwash on teaching, it wou
32、ld have a much better reputation amongst teachers. Besides, the teaching profession can also make two contributions to the improvement of testing: they can write better tests themselves, and they can put pressure on others, including professional testers and examining boards, to improve their tests
33、14 For example, Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) originally consisted of only multiple-choice items, but no writing tests. Many years passed, testers maintained that it was simply impossible to test the writing ability of hundreds of thousands of candidates by means of a composition: it
34、 was impracticable and the results, anyhow, would be unreliable. “Yet in 1986 a writing test (Test of Written English), in which candidates actually have to write for 30minutes, was introduced as a supplement to TOEFL, and already many colleges in the United States are requiring applications to take
35、 this test in addition to TOEFL. The principal reason given for this change was pressure from English language teachers who had finally convinced those responsible for the TOEFL of the overriding need for a writing test which would provide beneficial backwash”10. 3. Testing the Writing Skills 3.1 Th
36、e writing skills Four major skills in communication through language are often broadly defined as listening, speaking, reading and writing. In many situations where English is taught for general purposes, these skills should be carefully integrated and used to perform as many genuinely communicative
37、 tasks as possible. Where this is the case, it is important for the test writer to concentrate on those types of test items, which appear directly relevant to the ability to use language for real-life communication. As regards writing, test writers usually assess the students writing ability in the
38、form of letters, reports, memos, messages, instructions, and accounts of past events, etc. The writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach and to test, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices, but also of conceptual and judgmental elements. Heaton “grouped th
39、e many and varied skills necessary for writing good prose into five general components or main areas: Language use: the ability to write correct and appropriate sentences; Mechanical skills: the ability to use correctly those conventions peculiar to the written language e.g. punctuation, spelling; T
40、reatment of content: the ability to think creatively and develop thoughts, excluding all irrelevant information; Stylistic skills: the ability to manipulate sentences and paragraphs, and use language effectively; Judgmental skills: the ability to write in an appropriate manner for a particular purpo
41、se with a particular audience in mind, together with an ability to select, organize and order relevant information 11. 3.2 Different writing tasks and different standards An attempt should made to determine the types of writing tasks with which the students are in face of every day. Royal Society of
42、 Arts explicitly states the kinds of writing tasks its examinations test and the standards of writing expected in performance of those tasks. A successful candidate will have passed an examination designed to test ability to produce a selection of the following types of writing: (1)Basic level: lett
43、er; postcard; diary entry; forms. It requires no confusing errors of grammar or vocabulary; a piece of writing legible and readily intelligible; able to produce simple unsophisticated sentences. (2)Intermediate level: as basic level, plus guide; set of instructions. It requires accurate grammar, voc
44、abulary and spelling, though possibly with some mistakes which do not destroy communication; handwriting generally legible; expression clear and appropriate, using a fair range of language; able to link themes and points coherently. (3)Advanced level: as intermediate level, plus newspaper reports; n
45、otes. It requires extremely high standards of grammar, vocabulary and spelling; Easily legible handwriting; no obvious limitations on range of language candidate is able to use accurately and appropriately; ability to produce organized, coherent writing, displaying considerable sophistication. 3.3 O
46、btaining reliable scoring of writing In order to score as reliably as possible, scorers should obtain appropriate and reliable scoring of writing. The process of scoring can be either holistic or analytic. 3.3.1 Holistic scoring Holistic scoring (often referred to as impressionistic scoring ) involv
47、es the assignment of a single to a piece of writing on the basis of an overall impression of it as a whole17 Each paper is scored using an agreed scale and an examinees score is the average of the combined marks. The notion of impression marking specifically excludes any attempt to separate the disc
48、rete features of a composition for scoring purposes. Holistic scoring has two main advantages:1)it is very rappid;2)if well conceived and well organized, holistic scoring in which each students work is scored by four different trained scorers can result in high scorer reliability. However, the probl
49、em is that it is affected by fatigue, carelessness, prejudice, etc, of the scorers13 3.3.2 Analytic scoring Ways of scoring which require a separate score for each of a number of aspects of a task are said to be analytic. These aspects usually include: grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, fluency, and cohesion. There are a number of advantages to analytic scoring. First, it disposes of the problem of uneven development of sub-skills in individuals. Secondly, scorers are compelled to consider aspects of performance which they might otherwise ignore. And thirdly, t
