2014 Freshmen’s English Proficiency Test was hold from 8:30 to 10:30 on the morning of October 25 at both Jiaoqiao and Mailu campus of Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics (JUFE) in order to get a unified English proficiency assessment of the fresh students from various parts around China to establish benchmark database for the follow-up quality assessment project of college English teaching. 3372 freshmen attended the test in 79 examination rooms, excluding “foreign-related” majors and art and PE majors. Vice-president of the University Deng Hui and main principals of School of Foreign Languages and Office of Teaching Affairs attached great importance to and took charge of this large-scale test. Invigilators and exam markers also performed their duties in earnest, although that weekend was supposed to be their spare time.

Careful Arrangements before Test

In order to make sure that the test goes on wheels, teachers were required to notify every examinee a week before. Furthermore, a manual compiled in accordance with the Invigilators’ Manual for College English Test (CET) was distributed to each invigilator so that they were clear about the rules and procedures of the test.

Strict Invigilation during Test

All the invigilators went to the post on time and instructed students to fill in their machine-read cassette properly. The whole test went on smoothly and in order. All the examinees arrived at their rooms 15 minutes before the test started. They were honest and no cheating was found during the test.

Collective Marking after Test

Due to the large volume of examination paper, test marking lasted seven and a half hours, from 12:00 at noon to 7:30 in the evening. It operated like an assembly line, in which each marker is only responsible for a specific section of the test. The input of the test data is under way and the corresponding Benchmark Database will be established soon. Then, specialized personnel will analyze and summarize those data and send a feedback report of the students’ scores to their teachers to help them improve their English teaching.

It was reported that School of Foreign Languages had started the Follow-up Quality Assessment Project of College English Teaching in September 2013 to deepen the college English teaching reform. In that project, the assessment of teacher’ performance involved students’ evaluation scores, the average scores of students in the final exam and improvement rate, which account for 20%, 30% and 50% respectively. The goal of that project was to make a horizontal comparison of teaching effects and a longitudinal comparison of class scores among 65 College English classes of freshmen in 2013. Last year’s data shows that the improvement rate of those target classes is 96.9%, so School of Foreign Languages will promote and perfect the follow-up project this year, which is also in conformity with the JUFE’s general requests of comprehensively deepening educational reform.