The purpose of the Test for English Majors (TEM) is to measure the English proficiency of Chinese university undergraduates majoring in English Language and Literature and to examine whether these students meet the required levels of English language abilities as specified in the National College English Teaching Syllabus for English Majors (hereafter the Syllabus, NACFLT, 2000). Since the Syllabus divides the four-year English major undergraduate programme into the foundation stage (the first and second year) and the advanced stage (the third and fourth year), the TEM test battery correspondingly consists of TEM4 and TEM4 Oral, assessing students' English proficiency at the end of the foundation stage, and TEM8 and TEM8 Oral, assessing students' English proficiency at the end of the advanced stage. The TEM is administered by the National Advisory Committee for Foreign Language Teaching (NACFLT) on behalf of the Higher Education Department, Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China. The four tests in the battery are all administered once a year with TEM4 in April, TEM8 in March, TEM4 Oral in May and TEM8 Oral in December. The total test time is 135 minutes for TEM4 and 195 minutes for TEM8. Each oral test takes approximately 25 minutes to complete. TEM test scores are reported to the Academic Affairs Office of the participating universities. In the case of TEM4 and TEM8, individual test takers scoring 60 or above receive a certificate from the NACFLT on which their level of performance is reported, including "excellent" (score 80 or above), "good" (score between 70 and 79) and "pass" (score between 60 and 69). Neither composite scores nor section scores are reported to test takers. They can, however, check their composite scores through the Academic Affairs Office of their university. For the two oral tests, test takers who pass the tests are awarded a separate certificate from the NACFLT on which the same three levels are reported:excellent", "good" and "pass." The levels are converted from the average of the total raw scores awarded by two TEM authorized oral examiners. (Contains 1 table.)