Assignment #5

Assignment Five:  You will design and test a short survey. Include a variety of question types such as scale rating, short answer, and open-ended. You will submit the original version and the modified version based on the testing of the survey with four individuals. You will post your information on your blog.

 

Background information of this survey:

 

College English Test (CET) is an exam designed by Ministry of Education in China to  make university education meet the demand of reform and opening up in China by testing English proficiency and promoting university level English teaching. With only two levels of Band 4 and Band 6, it measures listening, reading, writing, translating, and from 1999 in limited cities, speaking skills. It gained wide popularity and recognition in China by arousing the awareness among university students to obtain a key to be enrolled in graduate studies programs, employed or promoted in job positions, and even to graduate with a degree, though the official claim is to assess students’ English proficiency and improve English teaching at university and college level.

 

CET exams have been criticized from over a decade ago and rumours of its cancellation are talked about every year.  According to a news article on China Daily, some Chinese students even wrote on White House petition site “We The People” and demanded to cancel CET tests in China, although the exams are neither designed nor administered by U.S. government. On Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) some even wrote “no deal no kill” by advocating university students not to sign up for CET exams, in order to put an end to it and its torture to nearly all Chinese university students.

 

Purpose: This survey will probe into students’ experience and perspective on CET-4 so as to discover the linkage between CET-4 and students’ university English classes, employment, and long-term English proficiency.

Audience: People who are working and graduated within the past 5 years from a university program other than English.

 

Below is the link to the original survey:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByMBwkDarGkUVHlhYmoyVy1rSzQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

Below is the link to the modified version of the survey after 5 pilot tests:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByMBwkDarGkUTHhRQ29VS2RWM3M/edit?usp=sharing

 

During pilot testing, a lot of feedback from participants, especially on the questions with regard to participant information. Their suggestions helped me rethink how to collect information that I need from this survey.

 

Throughout the drafting and modification of the survey, I do find some limitations in my work, and the biggest one is: there is too much to consider. The national test system CET is a quite big program and I am trying to cover a lot of things in this one survey, and it’s far from enough to evaluate the test system in just one survey. If a group really wants to evaluation this national test system, more surveys and assessments have to be done among university teachers, school administrators, CET organizing committees, employers, and the public, beside my current audience of graduated students who are currently working.

 

If only for this assignment, I now think it might be better if my purpose could narrow down to “the relevancy of university English curriculum and teaching in China to CET-4”, or “the relevancy of CET-4 result to employment”, or “the relevancy of CET-4 to Practical English use”. It would be much easier to handle and organize.