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Title
An alternative look at classroom assessment:
An Asian EFL teacher's changing beliefs
Presenter
Shao-Ting Alan Hung
Abstract
Classroom assessment in Asian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms has long been centered on discrete-point, multiple-choice items to gauge learners’ language competence. While this pedagogy was influenced by the concept of communicative language teaching approaches in the past decade, classroom teachers were urged to adapt to new assessment approaches, focusing on activities that represent classroom and real-world settings. However, little is known about how Asian teachers react to such a Western assessment construct. In particular, not enough research has been conducted to investigate if and how an advanced academic study has changed EFL teachers’ perceptions toward and practices of classroom assessment. Therefore, the present study was proposed to explore how one EFL teacher reacted to this new form of assessment and how his perceptions on EFL assessment changed through the course of academic study. The instruments for data collection in this study were in-depth interviews, document analysis, and email correspondences. The collected data were categorized into three themes—(1) prior beliefs and practices, (2) changes of beliefs, and (3) future practices. The findings identified some changes of this teacher’s beliefs in assessment: (1) objective tests should be used in conjunction with authentic assessment to reflect students’ performance, (2) students should be allowed more time to prepare for classroom assessment, and (3) assessment should be part of learning and revision should be allowed. Finally, the findings also suggested that advanced study provided opportunities for the in-service teacher to reflect on past teaching practices and to incorporate current academic experience into future teaching practice.
Key words: EFL/ESL, Language Assessment, Classroom assessment
Shao-Ting Alan Hung received his Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington, U.S.A. and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of English at National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Taiwan and an adjunct instructor at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. His research areas include computer-assisted language teaching and learning, language assessment, and second language writing pedagogy.
contact asian_efl_journal@yahoo.com
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