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1 Literature Review

1.1 Language testing development
The research field of language testing develops with the development of linguisticand language teaching theories, which becomes a highlight of both test organizers andteachers. As theories of how language is viewed and learned change a lot, fromstructuralism to communicative language ability model, theories concerning languageteaching and learning have also developed from the grammar-translation approach to communicative approach, which then influence the development of language testing, fromthe essay-translation approach to communicative approach as well. The theories concerning how language is viewed remain a very big question whichmay not be explained clearly for they have both abstract and concrete conceptions.Meanwhile, in different periods of time, people’s understanding about language has gonethrough a great change during the history, which can be traced back to 1940s.Before 1940s, the theory of language was not founded and people tended to treatlanguage as a kind of knowledge.Then, during the 1940s, the theory of language made its first great leap. During thisperiod, it was realized that “the knowledge of language rules did not equal the knowledgeof language itself” (Li 2001: 4). Consequently, some scholars suggested that “teach thelanguage, not about the language” (Moulton 1963, as cited in Li 2001). As a result, theschool of Structuralism came into people’s vision. Saussure viewed language as a systemof signs, which is consisting of “signifier” and “signified”. Meanwhile, the focus ofresearch of language is the underlying system of language which is called “Langue” bySaussure rather than the use of language, named “Parole”.
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1.2 Language ability
Needless to say, it is inevitable for test designers or testers to face and answer thequestion of what is the language ability, since the language ability is considered to be thecore of any language test, which is the ultimate goal of testing - making a proper and fairmeasurement of the test takers’ language ability. Admittedly, the language ability that testdesigners are to evaluate is invisible and cannot be got from direct measurement. In thissense, the ability of using the target language by test takers can only be inferred from thevisible manifestation of test takers’ language ability through certain testing tasks.The meaning of language ability broadens largely to involve many factors other thanthe linguistic competence during the development of language theory.In the pre-scientific era, no proper view about the concept of “language” was held.During that period, the emphasis of language ability was to master the knowledge oflanguage especially the grammatical rules, and nothing else.It was not until the appearance of Ferdinand de Saussure that a whole newunderstanding of the term “language” was formed. Saussure stated that language was asystem of signs consisting of signifier and signified. In addition, it was Saussure whoaddressed the term langue and parole, referring to the linguistic competence of the speakerand the actual phenomenon of linguistics respectively.
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2 Methodology

2.1 Research questions
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