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2. Current Assessment Model of English Teaching in Middle School
Nowadays, English is an important language that is widely taught and learned all over the world. As many factors combine to influence English teaching and learning process, we realize that teaching and learning English well are not that easy. For example, the traditional test-oriented assessment puts too much emphasis on students’ grasp of grammar and vocabulary while neglects students’ improvement in oral English, which turns out to be an obstacle in the overall implementation of English teaching and learning (Chen Yue, 2013:115). To conclude, this traditional assessment model is imperfect in its way to assess students’ language competence. From the perspective of the development of basic education, this assessment model can’t keep pace with the requirements of new curriculum reform.
There has been numerous studies on this topic, most of which point out the defects of summative assessment. Firstly, the deep-rooted idea of summative assessment needs to be changed. Lacking in theoretical guidance, most teachers just imitate predecessors’ application of summative assessment regardless of its practicability. Secondly, the criterion of summative assessment is not rigorous in that it highlights students’ intellectual education while neglects their subjectivity, motility and creativity. The new curriculum reform defines curriculum goals as comprehensive language capacity, including language knowledge, language skills, learning strategies, emotional attitudes and culture awareness (Liu Fengxian, 2005: 60). With only one criterion, that is, students’ scores on tests, summative assessment shows its one-sidedness vividly. In other words, summative assessment is powerless in testing students’ overall development. Thirdly, the strategies to use summative assessment are out-dated. As summative assessment focuses only on students’ final scores, students will gradually pay less attention to their performance in the learning process, which is unfavorable to motivate their interest in English study. Meanwhile, teachers will inevitably lose the initiative to explore and reform their teaching contents and methods. Under this circumstance, as long as the students can get a high score in tests, they will gain a sense of achievement. Similarly, as long as his students perform better than others’, a teacher will win the reputation of being a good educator. Regardless of students’ scores in tests, we should admit that they don’t assume their respective responsibilities in the process of learning. Based on the existing problems mentioned above, educators had created a better assessment model in middle school English teaching. They hold that in many academic settings, formative and summative assessments are not mutually exclusive, and the same assessment may be used for both purposes. Formative assessments are not limited to instructor/supervisor assessments of students, but also include the use of student self-assessment, peer assessment, and administrative assessment of educational effectiveness (Emanuel, Robinson and Korczak, 2013: 14).