Review on the validity of China’s Standards of English Language Ability

Abstract

The English and Chinese versions of China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) were released in 2018. The appearance of CSE helps to solve the problems of different standards of English exams in China, the separation of teaching and assessment objectives, and the incoherence of teaching objectives at various stages. Before, during, and after the development of the CSE, many scholars have discussed the construction of the scale from theory to practice and contributed to the realization of the same standardization for English testing in China. This paper aims to review the relevant studies in order to provide insights and suggestions for the future research and application of the CSE from three aspects: 1) introducing the two major theoretical frameworks for validating language scales in China; 2) reviewing the studies on the validity of the CSE in general; and 3) reviewing the empirical studies on the validity of the sub-scales in the CSE, including listening, speaking, reading, writing, interpreting, translation, pragmatic competence. However, there is a lack of studies on the aspect of organizational competence.