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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 

1.1 Research Background 
The  development  and  deployment  of  language  testing  is  to  better  serve  for teaching  and  Education  system.  As  a  means  of  assessment,  it  plays  key  roles  in people’s life, functioning as a gateway for students’ enrollment, for migration and for employment.  Washback,  defined  as  “the  effect  of  testing  on  teaching  and  learning” (Hughes, 1989), has gained great popularity among the researchers. Since the 1990s, washback has gradually become an independent branch of testing. Research has been conducted  and  the  researchers  attempt  to  explore  the  existence,  the  working mechanism, the length and the direction of washback (Alderson & Wall, 1993; Bailey, 1996;  Hughes,  1989;  Messick,  1989).  Besides,  research  related  to  the  relationship between  the  tests’  stakes  and  the  expected  washback  is  also  conducted,  and  it  is concluded that neither a very low-stakes test nor a very high-stakes test help to realize the expected washback effect. College  English  Test  (CET),  administrated  by  the  National  College  English Testing Committee (NCET) under the leadership of the Higher Education Department, the  Ministry  of  Education  (Jin  &  Yang,  2006),  is  a  nationwide  standardized  test, which consists of CET Band Four (CET-4) and CET Band Six (CET-6), and both of them  contain  the  corresponding  spoken  tests  (CET-SET).  For  CET-4,  all  the non-English  majors  must  take  the  exam,  because  for  many  colleges,  it  is  closely related to students’ BA degree and many employers also regard CET certificate as one of  the  standards  to  select  the  graduates;  while  for  CET-6,  only  those  whose  CET-4 score reach 425 or above have access to CET-6 and it is optional. For CET-SET, it is also  optional  and  only  those  whose  CET-4  scores  are  550  or  above  or  whose  CET-6 scores are 520 or above can take it. Due to its large population and great popularity in the society, CET-4 is a large-scale and high-stakes test, whose application and reform arouse  great  concern  among  college  students,  college  English  teachers,  researchers, test developers and even the test materials editors. In 2006, under the guidance of the National  Curriculum  Requirements  for  College  English,  CET-4  had  its  reform,  in which  the  listening  sub-tests  have  changed  dramatically.
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1.2 Significance and Objectives of the Study 
Reliability and validity are two indispensible factors for checking whether a test is  scientific,  and  Jin  a本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。