Traditionally EFL teaching in China has been guided by the grammar and translation approach. Correspondingly, the College Entrance English Examination (CEEE) prior to 1985 was characterized by emphasis on grammar, which aimed at measuring the examinees' mastery of grammatical knowledge of the English language. Authorized by the State Education Commission, an experimental CEEE was started in Shanghai in 1985 in an attempt to explore how to reform the rationale and format of the CEEE.; The primary concern in the experimental CEEE is to increase the CEEE's validity while striving for a desirable reliability. Drawing mainly from the theoretical framework of language ability proposed by Canale and Swain (1980), the interactive approach to ESL/EFL reading, and the discrete- point and integrative approaches to language testing, the experimental CEEEs increased the proportion of testing reading ability step by step. The CEEE has thus been changed from an achievement test of language knowledge prior to 1985 into a proficiency test of reading ability in 1991 and later.; The results of the experimental CEEEs indicate that both knowledge of the language and background knowledge of the text as well as such reading skills as making inferences and distinguishing the main points from supporting details are crucial for EFL readers of lower levels. Hence EFL reading is believed to be both a language problem and a reading problem.; The results of the experimental CEEEs also show that the reason why some words deleted in a cloze test are more predictable than other words may not lie in whether they are content words or function words. Rather, it lies in the linguistic environments of the deleted words and the constraints implied in the text.; The study concludes with a proposal for further revision of the CEEE based on psychometric, linguistic, pedagogical and cultural considerations.
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