48Assessment Approaches in ESL Teaching.docVIP

Assessment Approaches in ESL Teaching Xiamen Haicang Experimental Middle School Chen Huirong [Key words] assessment, approaches, make-up exams, checklists, multi- intelligence, learning styles [Abstract] The situation of assessment here in China is that,, up to now ,we have already assessed our students mainly by testing them. We accept students in senior grades and even in colleges 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 we are undertaking a national program to find better ways to assess our students. We divide the English levels into 9 grades. And when you want to graduate from middle school and go to college, you should pass a certain degree, that is, Grade 8. In this way, I am sure the students’ English will really be improved a lot. And their English learning will become more active. But we are short of concrete ways of implementation. So we‘d better find suitable ways for our own students., Here I’d like to present some assessment approaches in ESL Teaching according to what we have done here in Xiamen. China in the New Curriculum Innovation. [Projects] 1). Nowadays we mainly assess our students in summative assessment, but if we try to use more formative assessment, 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’ examination paper. It is designed by the Curriculum Development Center of the Assessment Program in China. With its help, teachers can assess students by 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 feel difficult in …, I like …”. At last, teachers and students can write