ACADEMIC SPEAKING

The qualified and effective English language teaching and learning

process has been promoted as the government of China reformed the policy of
education in the late 1970s. This is not only about the reformation of the policy,
but also the issue about formative assessment which will be incorporated into
the original summative assessment by CECR (the College English Curriculum
Requirements). CECR defined formative assessment as the continuous
assessment which is done during the learning process in the classroom.
Furthermore, it also covers self and peer assessment. In carrying out students into
the two assessments, there are four levels of grading from A through to D. A
defined as excellent, B defined as slightly excellent, C represents as good, and D
comes as Bad.
For further understanding about formative assessment, let me explain
more about it. Black and William (2009) offer the following definition for
formative assessment. They defined it as the activities or practices conducted in
the classroom by the students and the teacher in order to extend students
achievements to be better. Meanwhile, Charles denied it with his argument
which said that their definition does not jot down the students role as active
learners in formative assessment, but CECRs does. The issue about involving
formative assessment into its enactment cause quite complex problem because
it has to adapt to CHC (Confucian Heritage Culture). Thus, it must be needed to
transfer culture into the CECR development and to deliver them in one unity into
Chinese classrooms. However, thats not as easy as you think it is.
Speaking about enactment, I am here going to draw some definitions of
it. Ball et all (2012) stated that enactment related to ways of schools in building
and drilling practices. While, Heimans said that it is related to how people and
things have effects to create differences so that it can be called as education.
The beginning is not always good, it must have some constraints, such as
sociocultural factors which is grounded to be the major barrier to the
enactment in CHC context in China. Additionally, nonqualified teacher is also a
big problem since the supportive prior knowledge and experience is crucial.
Seeing that those problems contribute a lot, formative assessment must be
considered as a continuum possibilities, the aim is to give some space to CHC to
adapt to formative assessment because we all know that something big is not
instant.
Hamp Lyons (2007) draws two kinds of assessment in English Language
assessment practices in the following : the first is a traditional testing culture
which focuses on accuracy, norms, proficiency, and product, while the
emergent classroom-based assessment culture emphasizes on individual
achievement and process.
Okay, I will move on the next term, that is methodology of the research. It
focuses on the responses of teachers and students toward formative assessment
in two universities, one is Key University (KU) and the other is Non-Key University
(NKU). From KU, Lin was chosen to be observed because Lin is experienced
enough. Lin had experienced teaching English language over 15 years and
graduated from U.K and USA. Moreover, Zhang is also good enough even
though she had only experienced teaching English language for 10 years. The
data is collected through videotaped and the researcher making notes using
coding scheme, after that, the videos were transcribed, translated, and
identified by Nvivo 8 (a software that helped the identification). Teachers
feedback and questioning is the episodes which are emphasized.
For further details, I draw the information needed on the table. First of all,
this observation engaged with effective formative assessment in the classroom
which includes feedback and questioning, self and peer assessment, and the
influence of testing culture. Lets start from Lins class. This is really surprising to
know that actually there were 78 students who wanted to join his class but he
only accepted 40 based on the quota regarded by the university. This is not a
matter about the number of the students that made him not able in recognizing
each students and giving individual feedback, but this is about the time that
was very limit. He only had 2 hours per week. The observation in Lins class had
been conducted for 6 hours as have been stated before. The focus is in several
listening and speaking where the main activity is individual oral presentation
done by the students. So, they were allowed to choose any topic of interest and
created powerpoint slides. To improve students listening skill, He asked students
to listen to their friends presentations and He will ask some questions to them. In
addition to listening skill improvement, Lin also gave positive and evaluative
feedback, he emphasized on language usage (vocabulary choice and
pronounciation). For example, students have to be able to say resep dokter in
English, its prescription not recipe, some students might misunderstand about
this one.
Okay lets jump into the second point. Its about self and peer assessment
in Lins class. He didnt invove this kinds of assessment, but he did it in the
previous semester in writing class through the blogging activity. So, each
students have to upload their works and check their friends works. The scores
from peers will be allocated for about 30%. However, there was one student
who refused this kind of activity bcoz teachers is enough. While, the other one
student initiated and monitored self and peer assessment as the priority and did
not take the scores from teacher seriously. The influence of testing culture also
contribute to students roles in the classroom. For your information, Chinese
culture in education focuses more on the teacher, students are expected to
only learn from the teacher not from peers or others. In this case, Lin once
experienced to be complained by one student when introducing blogging
activity. Importantly, he didnt give up to make students understand that this is
important. As the time went by, students saw the value of testing is not about to
prepare for tests only, but the ultimate goal is proficiency. Moreover, there was
still one argued that teaching for tests influence classroom learning and
activities more alive. For example, CET-4 (College English Testing) which can be
called as English standardized test, more students reported to take this test and
asked Lin to give them additional material and practices for test preparation but
He refused it. He only provided some material on his web.
Now, we come into Zhangs class. She is really awesome because she was
able to teach 3 classes which consist of 56, 49, 50 students. Unbelievable, she
could recognize and give feedback to each students, she said that she is able
to recognize all of them in 2 weeks. Unlike in Lins class, the observation here had
been conducted for 8 hours because of the number of students and classess.
The activities were alike to Lins class and the skills were listening and speakings.
The difference was it is group work. She put students into groups of 4 or 5 and
she gave them 4 guiding questions about the topic. They are given 15 minutes
to prepare for presentations and only one speaker from each group would
present it. Zhang didnt give her students positive feedback and it focused on
linguistic accuracy, and also grammar and pronounciation errors. The next term
is self and peer assessment. Almost the same as lins class. There were some
students admitted that they were involved in those activities, but some didnt.
Zhang didnt think too much about self and peer assessment because if she
involved students in it there will be subjective assessment. It makes sense since
one student will give good feedback and scores based on friendship. Okay, lets
discuss about the influence of testing culture. Zhang said that testing was not
meaningful, but with good proficiency, you can pass any kinds of test. Zhang
argued that CET-4 which is discontinuing is important as a criterion for students
especially when they looking for a job. the employer must want to know their
levels and CET-4 is the criterion of this. Tests affect students to study more and
more because their value had been determined by tests throughout schooling
in society. It will make them happy when they pass the test, but will take them
down when they fail to do it.
 We can infer that the extent of formative assessment in the classrooms of
the two universities is still far from the incorporation of formative assessment
intended by CECR. There was still some students who recognized it as the
effective activity while some didnt. In such a way, lecturers have to be creative
to use different strategies with different students in contexts. It seems that both
teachers need to be practiced more to win out success of formative
assessment. We can conclude from the two teachers, Lin focused more on
process learning, while Zhang focused more on the product of learning.