A comparative study of cet-4 and tem-4 in china

Abstract

English has been very popular in P.R. China with the rapid economic development benefited from the open policy. To develop college English teaching and evaluate college English learning, the Ministry of Education set up a national college English test initiated in 1987. Recently, more and more people have begun to realize the close relationship between testing and teaching, knowing that they are tightly interrelated and it is virtually impossible to work in one field without being concerned with the other. This paper makes the comparison between the College English Test Band 4 (CET-4) and the Test for English Major Grade 4 (TEM-4) to sort out the similarities and differences between them and to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages for college English teaching in China. Finally, this paper puts forward that CET and TEM should be conflated as one didactic test instead of splitting them into two types. © 2007 ALC Press, Inc.