| Chapter Ⅰ.
Introduction
The title of my thesis is “ Some Suggestion for Assessment Approaches
in ESL Teaching in High School in China ”. The situation of assessment
here in China is that ,up to now, students are accepted in senior
grades and even in college according to their total scores of English
and other subjects, unless they major in English. But people have
found that this approach is not scientific. So a national program
is going on to find better ways to assess our students. At the same
time, we are having New Curriculum Innovation. We divide the English
level into 9 grades. And when you want to graduate from middle school
and go to college, you should pass a certain degree of English,
for example, Grade 8. In this way, I am sure the students’ English
will really be improved a lot. Here I’d like to present some suggestions
for assessment approaches in ESL Teaching according to what we have
done here in Xiamen, China in the New Curriculum Innovation.
Chapter Ⅱ. Suggestions
1). There are many differences between summative assessment
and formative assessment, and many advantage in formative assessment.
So more attention should be paid to formative assessment. If more
formative assessment is used , we can get to know what the students
have or haven’t mastered and why they have or haven’t mastered it.
Here we have a checklist (See Appendix: Checklist One), “the Report
of Achievement” on analyzing students’ paper. It is designed by
the giving descriptive comments, pointing out achievements or problems
and grading their abilities on language knowledge, communicative
competence and creativeness. At the same time, students can assess
themselves by writing down “I am good at…, I find difficulties in…,
I like …”. At last, teachers and students can write dome their self-reflection.
Also we can design checklists on assessing students for a period.
(See Appendix: Checklist Two). On the other hand, we design them
for non-testing assessment. We use this checklists every month to
remind our students on their learning styles and strategies, and
report these items to their parents at the parents’ meeting or children
to make further progress, and make the students do self-reflection.
So we can assess our students in specific descriptive appraisal
while they are learning.
At the same time parents can help with the design of assessment.
We can often interview them and communicate with them on how to
assess our students. I have interviewed some parents on how to assess
their children. Of course, they can never forget testing, but at
the same, they’d like teachers to assess their children authentically
and encouragingly. Then I also interviewed some students, they’d
like to be assessed on different aspects. So we should try our best
to help them finish tasks though different channels. For example,
different students should be given different requirement. In the
classroom we teachers should reduce competition and increase cooperation.
In this way, the students can get along with each each other very
well, learn from each other and improve themselves gradually with
others’ help. And a wise teacher never contrasts his students in
public. This, on the other hand, protects the students’ self-esteem
and gives the students chances to develop themselves. It’ll make
students feel no enthusiasm for their study, while for grading,
though it’s vague, it reduce the comparability among students. It
help to build up students’ self-confidence and push them to make
more efforts. And these two emotions (self-esteem and self-confidence)
are the indispensable motivation for students’ further study. This
concerns the term “Ambiguity Tolerance”. A person who is tolerant
of ambiguity is free to entertain a number of innovative and creative
possibilities and not be cognitively or ambiguity is free to entertain
a number of innovative and creative possibilities and not be cognitively
or affectively disturbed by ambiguity and uncertainty. (H.Dovglas
Brown, 2000, p120).
2). According to the principles of assessment, we assess our
students according to the following requirements.
a) Students can learn how to learn. Students can do things in
English actively with the help of teachers’ to incorporate English
learning in study of other subjects.
b) Students can use English in a communicative way. The affection
elements like interest, attitudes, motivations and students’ needs
should be involved in the assessment.
c) In group learning, we should assess their presentation of
individual role play and co-operation with one another.
d) The ability of problem-solving: a learning process is a process
of problem-solving. This motivates students a lot.
e) Learn to self-reflect. According to cognitive theories, assessment
can help students to self-reflect and improve themselves. (Li, J
and Li,Y. 2001)
3). For the New Curriculum of the whole curriculum innovation.
It serves for the improvement of teaching and learning, and the
guide of them, so it must fit the principles of teaching and learning.
In the past, people thought learning is to get familiar with all
kinds of objective information, like datas, procedures, figures,
etc. While for the new assessment system, people think learning
is totally subjective. Students change, enlarge, question, further,
renew and develop their knowledge towards the world and themselves
by means of learning. So a successful teaching is to help students
get ready for their meaningful life in the future, use what they’ve
learned in the real word (David Lazear, 2000, p27). And with the
development of the New Curricula, the students’ learning styles
should be changed a lot. The way of inquiry learning is quite suitable.
For inquiry and creativity are the most precious in learning. In
English that is mainly the task—based approach. This refers to materials
or course which are designed around a series of authentic tasks
which give the learners experiences of using the language in ways
that are used in “real world” outside the classroom (). This will
help to incorporate the knowledge of other subjects in our English
learning. The students will be able to use English more widely and
authentically. This kind of learning of will be interesting and
meaningful.
Very often some teachers may complain, ”I have tried many kinds
of teaching methods, and I’ve been very kind to the students. But
why are they still poor in English learning?” At this time, have
you even thought about if your teaching methods are suitable for
the students and their learning strategies, both in learning and
communication? Have you ever developed multiple intelligence approach
to assessment? Our summative assessment just emphasizes mainly on
linguistic intelligence and logical-mathematical intelligence, ignoring
the other intelligence (Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Spatial, Interpersonal
and Intrapersonal Intelligence) that is needed in the society, preventing
the potential on students from being confirmed and developed. This
is somehow a waste of talent (Xu.Y, Gong, XH, 2001 p26 ). And according
to the constructivism, the New Curriculum Innovation is implemented
by the students’ motivation in constructing their knowledge (Xu.Y,
Gong, XH, 2001 p31 ). And the targets for education are to teach
students how to study, how to think and how to develop intelligence
as as much as possible. (David Lasear, 2000, p26 ) Dr.Peng Siqing
says, “The main task for high school students is not “study” but
“growth”. And “growth ” should include the development of intelligence,
the improvement of study, the healthiness of body, psychological
factors and moral character, spiritual richness and perfection of
personality.” (Peng Siqing, China Youth Daily. June 13, 2002 )
4). According to the New Curriculum Standards, we’d better set
up a series of assessment plans according to the general descriptions
for the curriculum targets. The more detailed assessment approaches
we have, the more accurate achievements the students will get. So
here we should take teaching objectives, resources and assessment
together into consideration. They interact with each other.
5). Then I’d like to present some suggestions from experts (A)
First for the experts have mentioned that we should be student-centered
in classroom teaching. We designed a form to measure the students’
presentation in class. (See Appendix: Checklist Three ). The assessment
for each student should include participation of students. Their
presentation in class counts. At the same time, we ask our students
to be the judges, in this way they can know the items of assessment
better and perform better. Also, they will take or students have
already used the checklist tactfully enough. They assess with each
other either in class or right after class. As a result way, they
improve their English a lot. Of course, we can make more communication-based
checklist. For communication is the outcome of language learning.
And the checklist will help students self- reflect and monitor their
learning procedure.
(B) Secondly, it’s very necessary to give the students some
regular checklists to assess their behaviors in school and at home
and be assessed by their classmates, teachers and parents. That
is the authentic assessment. In this way, we can see how well and
in what way students are able to do requisite tasks. (see Appendix:
Checklist Four and Five). From the forms, we can know our students
better both in class and after class. At the some time, parents
can know their children better. For Checklist Four we’ll divide
the whole class into groups of four, and ask them to assess with
each other by adding 5 scores items of “excellent”, 4 for “good”,
3 for “not bad”, 2 for “so-so”, 1 for “not good enough”. 0 for “needing
improving”. It’s the same with the checklist at home, but it’ll
be filled by parents.
(C) Thirdly, as different students have different characteristic.
If you try to use the same measure to assess different students,
it may lead to failure. So we divide the students in the two classes
to Class A and Class B. For Class A, we have higher requirements,
and for Class B, lower ones. All the outcomes stand for their usual
behaviors. This encourages Class B a lot, and also pushes Class
A to fly higher and higher. We have different comments on different
students, right here we can focus on their progress to develop the
variety and flexibility of assessment.
(D) Fourthly what you assess your students may cause what they
are paying attention to, how you assess them may decide how they
study. On the other hand we should also pay attention to the assessment
approaches and curriculum innovation in other countries, in this
way we can push our Curriculum Innovation and develop our assessment
approaches.
(E) And the final suggestion from the experts provides us chances
to use formative assessment according to the curriculum standards
and the local situations. This really gives us teachers a new version
of teaching. And with the development of teaching resources, teachers
will be much freer to deal with the teaching materials and teaching
methodologies.
Chapter Ⅲ. Conclusions and Recommendations
We collect the suggestions above mainly basing on what we’ve
done or thought of and the experts’ suggestions. Here I’d like to
sum up the suggestions.
1) The person who assess the students should not only be the
teachers but also the students themselves, their parents, other
students and even the administrators of the school. In this way,
we can develop multi-dimensional assessment.
2) For each individual student is different, we should assess
them in multiple intelligences and as specifically as possible,
such as summative assessment, formative assessment, testing assessment
and non-testing assessment, etc. And each assessment method has
its own limitations, so combine these methods, and as detailed as
possible.
3) Make full of the encouraging and diagnosing function of assessment
to develop the students’ English level, build up their self-confidence,
raise their interest, lower their anxiety, learn to self-reflect.
4) It’s important develop suitable assessment instruments / tools
to assess our students. Such as checklists, portfolios, descriptive
assessment, anecdotal records, feed back, rating scales of tasks
and presentations, interviews, conference questionnaires, observations.
And remember to give students chances to develop themselves on their
growth, not just on study.
The above is what I’ve learned during the period of the trial,
if there is something in it, I hope my study will somehow help ESL
teachers to assess students. Of course, I collect the ways according
to my own viewpoint. So just adapt them, but not adopt them. I just
want to give others enlightenment on how to assess students. People
may create different approaches from other points of view.
References:
1. Chen. Y (2001) The Research and Exploration for Basic Education
English Teaching Assessment. Beijing: the Beijing Educational Publishing
House.
2. David Lazear (2000) Multiple Intelligence Approaches to Assessment.
Copyright ? 1999 by Zephy Press. Translation copyright ? 2000 by
Yuan-Lou Publishing Co., Ltd.
3. H.Dovglas Brown (2000) Principles of Language Learning and
Teaching. Fourth Edition New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
4. Li. J and Li. Y (2001) Assessment Today (TV Broadcasting VCD)
Beijing: Beijing Electronic Audiovisual Press.
5. Peng Sigining, China Youth Daily, June 13, 2002.
6. Tomlinson, Brian. (Ed) (1998) Materials Development in language
Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7. Xu Y. XH (2001) The Assessment Reform for New Curricula. Beijing:
The Capital Normal University Press.
附录见评价工具《海沧市实验中学英语教学评价常用表》
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