Test fairness of the in-house college English examination for Chinese non-English major undergraduates: a case study

Kangxi Li Mengting Kong ^* Liye Li Jingwen Lu

• Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China

The in-house College English examination is a kind of high-stakes assessment for College English, a compulsory course for most non-English major undergraduates in China. Up till now, however, due attention has not been given to the fairness of such examination yet. This paper employs Kunnan’s Test Fairness Framework to investigate the common issues of test fairness related to the in-house College English examination, taking a university in East China as an example. By analyzing the College English examination data of 5680 non-English major undergraduates spanning from 2018 to 2020, this research finds that various fairness problems can be found in terms of validity, absence of bias, access, administration and social consequences, which in turn boils down to a few underlying factors, i.e., lack of language assessment literacy, time and funding on the part of examiners or administrators. Hence, this research proposes a holistic approach to improve test fairness, which involves all stakeholders and all procedures in the in-house College English examination. Also, it is suggested that collaborating with external experts on language tests, and lowering the stakes of in-house examinations are effective measures to mitigate the test unfairness issues.