The purpose of this study is to gauge the opinions of parents and teachers of English for the primary and secondary schools. It seeks to discover the implications for English education and provide referential data necessary to run a better English policy in school. A survey was conducted on a total of 3,294 particpants including 2,040 parents of public schools and 1,254 English teachers in primary and secondary schools. The questionnaire consists of 12 questions about the policies of TEE (Teaching English in English) and the NEAT (National English Ability Test). We used the SPSS 20.0 software to perform chi-square and t-tests. The results showed that teachers and parents were in agreement about the necessity of both TEE and the NEAT. In particular, the majority of parents thought that teaching English in English is important, and that the NEAT should be used for practical English improvement.

The purpose of this study is to present underlying principles and criteria for designing and developing National English Ability Test (NEAT). To this end, this study presents 5 principles (i.e., Connection, Authenticity, Interactiveness, IBT Compatibility, Washback Effectiveness) which play guiding and controlling roles in developing and selecting item types appropriate for the listening and the reading test of NEAT derived from test usefulness (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). Also, it proposes 4 criteria (i.e., Complementarity, Integration, Pivotality, and Hierarchicality) which function levering roles in designing and developing the two tests of NEAT on the basis of the empirical data of the item analyses of Foreign (English) domain of College Scholastic Ability Tests (2005~2010 school year). Finally, it discusses some implications and applications of the principles and the criteria to a theoretical blueprint for establishing an item developing system and a test implementation system, setting up the criteria of validating item types, designing a modular type of test specifications, and specifying a complementary type of test specifications for the two ability-level listening and reading tests (the 2nd and the 3rd rank) of NEAT.