ABSTRACT

The Practical English Test for Colleges is to test the abilities of fundamental English knowledge, language skills and in some simple foreign business related communications. According to the difficulty and performances, the listening comprehension is the biggest nut to crack. In December 2014, the adjustment increased the quota of listening comprehension, which brought a higher challenge for the students. 

This paper is committed to conduct a deeper analysis on the past five-year examine papers from aspects of texts and performances of examinee. The text analyzing consists of communicative scenes analysis, vocabulary analysis and readability analysis. Communicative scenes are applied in Section A, B and C. Vocabulary and Readability analyses are mainly in Section C and Section D. In this part, the Statistic Analyzing method would be of great importance, and tools applied here are mainly Vocabulary Profiler, Readability and Excel. The performance analyzing would mainly apply test analyzing method. The data are mainly from the Chongqing Test Paper Marking Center of PRETCO. In this part, statistic of mean and Difficulty play the major roles. The tools mentioned during analyzing are all in highly credibility according to series of practices of the predecessors. In addition, text characteristics are one of the most significant effects that affect the performances of examinee.  

Various analyses indicate that the most frequently occurred communicative scenes are about “inquiry” and “greeting” in Section A and Section B; In Section C, Conversation Two is often tougher than Conversation One ; In average, more than 80 percent of vocabularies both in Section C and D are in the list of “0-1000” words, and there still exist some AWL words in different sections; The lowest efficiency shows up in Section D, and the best in Section B. Based on these findings and information from the PRETCO-B website, some suggestions for students and teachers are proposed. 

Key words：PRETCO-B  Text Analysis  Performance Analysis  Suggestions

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

中文摘要

CHAPTER ONE  INTRODUCTION-1

1.1 BACKGROUND INFORMATION-1

1.2 PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY-1

1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STUDY-2

1.4 RESEARCH METHODS-2

CHAPTER TWO   LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 STUDIES ABOUT THE TEXTS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION IN PRETCO-B-3

2.2 STUDIES ABOUT BARRIERS IN LISTENING-5

2.3 STUDIES ABOUT SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING LISTENING IN PRETCO-B-6

2.4 CONCLUSION-8

CHAPTER THREE  TEXT ANALYSIS-10

3.1 ANALYSIS ON COMMUNICATIVE SCENES-10

3.1.1 Analysis on Section A-10

3.1.2 Analysis on Section B-13

3.1.3 Analysis on Section C-17

3.2 ANALYSIS ON VOCABULARY-18

3.2.1 Analysis on Section C-18

3.2.2 Analysis on Section D-21

3.3 ANALYSIS ON READABILITY-22

3.3.1 Analysis on Section C-23

3.3.2 ANnalysis on Section D-24

3.4 CONCLUSION-25

CHAPTER FOUR  PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS-27

4.1 MEAN&PASSING RATIO-27

4.2 DIFFICULTY ANALYSIS-28

CHAPTER FIVE  SUGGESTIONS-32

CHAPTER SIX  CONCLUSION-35

BIBLIOGRAPHY-36