Validity of College English Placement TestGroup 2Pan Haidong, Zudi, LixuDirector:ViVianJune 7, 2014Ocean University of ChinaI. IntroductionFreshmen need to take college English placement test when they enter Ocean University of China. College English placement test is intended to provide information that will help to place students at the stage of the teaching programme most appropriate to their abilities.However, we are not sure whether the test is valid or invalid. Therefore, based on the theory of language testing, we analyze the validity of college English placement test 2012 specificly below.We need empirical evidence to assert that whether our test has construct validity or not.Such evidence take several forms,including the subordinate forms of validity,content validity and criterion-related validity.We shall discuss these two forms of evidence in turn ,then turn to other forms of evidence.II. First, we study the content validity of the test.A: Definition of content validityA test is said to have content validity if its content constitutes a representative sample of the language skills, structures, etc. with which it is meant to be concerned.B:The college English placement test in Ocean University of China has low content validity.The greater a test‟s content validity, the more likely it is to be an accurate measure of what it is supposed to measure. And this college English placement test is intended to measure freshmen‟s English abilities in order to place them at different stages. the test‟s composition is as follows:In addition，this test is a completely objective test of the multiple-choice type, each item with four alternatives1, so “the type of expected response is what Popham (1987) refers to as the ‟selected‟ response”2The students who were selected into the high level，have to be proved to havegood ability in English listening, speaking, reading and writing, which is also the function of the placement test. However, in this paper, we can only test the candidate's writing and reading abilities，which reflects it does not have great content validity.In order to improve the content validity, we recommend adding test content. While，considering the time and cost,it can be added listening test only ignoring the speaking test.III.Second, we research the predictive validity of the test.A:Definition of predictive validity.Predictive validity is the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure3.B: The college English placement test in OUC has comparatively high predictive validity.The placement test is aimed to distinguish students' ability, is intended to predict candidates' future performance. If a student get a good score, it means his or her English is better than those whose score is low. According to these scores, students will be divided into two levels to start university English lesson. My classmates and I have been taken this kind of placement test, consequently, some of us start with learning College English Band One, while others can start with learning College English Band Three.However, not all placement tests will correctly make a distinction through some tests. In this case, we designed a questionnaire to find out the placement test's predictive reliability. We survey some students' placement test's results and their score of CET4. The result is obvious, students whose university English courses begin with College English Band Three, the probability that their score of CET4 over 550 is 0.67, meanwhile students whose university English courses begin with College English Band One, the probability that their score of CET4 over 550 is 0.42 . Generally, CET4 and CET6 are highly dependable in people's opinions, so we can also say that the placement test is also dependable because of the data we have been found. On the one hand, this prediction can assign students to English classes at different levels, and it's beneficial to students' learning. On the other hand, students who study English Band Three maybe have more pressure, and students will have less motivation of learning if they have been required to learn English Band One at the beginning of the freshman year.IV. Third, we investigate the validity in scoring.A:DefinitionValidity in scoring means that the way in which the responses are scored must be valid.B: V alidity in scoring of OUC college English placement test is comparatively high.A reading test may call for short written responses. If the scoring of these responses takes into account spelling, then it is invalid. For example, the third question in passage one of OUC college English placement test:When the foreign visitor is immersed in new problems that he finds hard to cope with, he is most likely to feel DA .uninsured B. deprived C. baffled D. alienatedIn our test ,we only need to write D on the paper. But if they request us to rewrite the word …alienated‟, a few of students may misspell this word unconsciously though they guess the meaning of the word successfully.All the questions in our test are multiple choice questions. This may guarantee the validity in scoring to some extent.V. Conclusion:In conclusion, validity study of the statistic data and the experimental materials have proved the fact that our college English placement test has not only high predictive validity, but also high validity in scoring, which can meet the requirement of distinguishing different English level of students. Thus drove university English teaching program effectively. To improve content validity of our placement test ,it can be added listening test only ignoring the speaking test in terms of time and money.REFERENCES[1]Huang Man. The Analysis of a College English Placement Test, Read and Write Periodical. 2013(9):10-9[2]Bachman Lyle F. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing [J]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2004.[3]Cronbach, L.J., & Meehl, P.E. (1955). Construct validity for psychological tests. Psychological Bulletin, 52, 281-302.[1]。