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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Oral English Testing Theory
According to Spolsky[5], language testing can be divided into three stages: thepre-scientific stage, the psychometric-structuralism stage and the communicative stage.The pre-scientific stage of testing emerged before the 1940s, where no special skills orexpertise are required. This stage emphasized language form more than meaning. Itsproponents maintained that language was a set of grammar rules. Therefore to learn alanguage was to study grammar rules and to read original works. In the 1960s, the mostpowerful school in language testing was psychometric-structuralism approach. Accordingto the structuralists language was a set of formal structures or symbols. To learn alanguage is to practice the skills of operating language symbols. This stage dealt with thefour skills and language knowledge separately, with a bit emphasis on oral language ability.The communicative stage came into being in the1970s, which put much emphasis onlanguage “competence” instead of “knowledge” or “skill”.Up to now, communicative language testing has played a dominant role in variouskinds of language tests. Foreign language testing can be dated back to more than onehundred years ago, however, the history of oral foreign language testing is relatively short.The structuralist testing system sprung up in the 1940s, since then oral testing became apart of the foreign language assessment. Therefore only structuralism and communicativetesting involve oral testing.
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2.2 Communicative Oral Language Test
The fundamental goal of foreign language testing is to measure the language learners’foreign language proficiency and make precise and fair assessment of the testees’ language competence. In 1972, Hymes put forward a brand new concept, that is, communicativecompetence[6]. Since then many scholars are inclined to equate foreign languageproficiency to communicative competence. Based on the predecessors’ theories, Bachmanproposes the theory of communicative language ability in 1990. His framework attemptsto “characterize the processes by which the various components interact with each otherand with the context in which language use occurs”[7]. He thinks that communicativecompetence was composed of three components: language competence, strategiccompetence and psycho-physiological mechanisms. Bachman’s definition of languagecompetence is “a set of components that are utilized in communication via language”[8].Language competence is made up of two components organizational competence andpragmatic competence. The second part, strategic competence, refers to three phases ofmental operations which are related to speech production, namely, assessment, planningand execution. The third part is psycho-physiological mechanisms. In real communication,there are two channels and two modes. The two channels consist of the visual channel andthe auditory channel while the two modes are composed of the productive mode andreceptive mode.
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Chapter Three Research Methodology.........11
3.1 Subjects .........11
3.2 Instruments .........11
3.3 Research Design .........12
Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussions.........15
4.1 Comparative Analysis of Two Groups .........15
4.2 Descriptive Analysis of the Test Scores.........20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。