Compared with the ordinary Chinese testing for the students who learn Mandarin in China , the specific Chinese testing has features as following:

1. High homogeny of examiner source

Specific Chinese testing in Chinese Lessons is often facing to a certain field. Thus the target examiners are usually from a specific field or interested in taking part in jobs related to a certain field and the examiner source is unitary. That is to say the examiner source has high homogeny. Because specific Chinese testing mostly focuses on professional fields, the examiners who learn Mandarin in China and take part in specific Chinese testing are adults. While as for ordinary Chinese testing, HSK is “set for testing the Chinese level of non-native Chinese speakers”. Comparatively speaking, the examiners who take part in Business Chinese testing have higher homogeny in motivation, purposes, occupation tendency and age.

Because specific language testing in Chinese Lessons is facing to examiners in a certain field, while examiners who take ordinary language testing come from broader range, people will think that the number of specific language testing examiners is smaller than ordinary language testing examiners. And the thought has been supported by some statistics. The number of examiners of specific Chinese testing is smaller indeed. But it doesn’t mean that this number is necessarily smaller that the number of examiners who take ordinary Chinese testing.

2. The language performance related to testing is tied up with the language using of specific fields

Specific language testing in Chinese Lessons is used to test the ability of using language of people in a certain field. This kind of testing has higher face validity and content validity. (Davies et al., 1999:113) the language performance tested by specific Chinese testing should be similar with the assignment of practically using Chinese of target examiners so that what the specific testing tests can be guaranteed to be the language ability that target examiners need in a certain field. This requires the testing assignment or purposes of specific Chinese testing researchers should be consistent with the Chinese using situation of target examiners.

3. The language project related to testing is tied up with its using frequency in the certain field

For the diversity of the fields that the target examiners occupy, the Chinese that they receive and produce have relevant features. Therefore, the language project related to specific Chinese testing in Chinese Lessons is tied up with its using frequency in fields that the examiners occupy. The using frequency of a certain field language and its feature are mirrored in the area of vocabulary, grammar and type of writing, especially in vocabulary. Different field have specific or common words. For example, in business Chinese, words like “壁垒“，“呆账”，“银根“，”开盘“，”收盘“， ”离岸价格“，”价格指数“，”逆差“are often used by people in business or trade field.

4. Emphasizing on different testing language skills

People in different fields require different language skills when using language and emphasize on language skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating in Chinese Lessons. Under this situation, specific Chinese testing should emphasize on different language skills according to the Chinese using situation of target examiners. As for how to emphasize, it depends on such questions: what do the target examiners do in Chinese? Do they need the comprehensive skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating or only one or more skills of them? what language skill level do they need? To make these questions clear has direct influence on the paper design and testing implementation of specific Chinese testing: should we test the comprehensive skill level of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating or emphasize on one or more skills? How to decide the score of every skill level or the pass mark? For example, as for Chinese tour guide, the skill of speaking is most important and the requirement for skills of listening, reading, writing and translating can be lowered down. Therefore, if we need to design the specific Chinese testing facing to Chinese tour guide, the test for speaking skill should be emphasized and the test for writing skill can be put on the subordinate place or even ignored.