A Comparative Study Of Language Assessment Literacy Between Pre-service And In-service Teachers

Teachers spend more than one third of their time in classroom assessment. Teachers’ capability of making good use of classroom assessment means a lot to the improvement of students’ learning, motivation and confidence, as well as teachers’ teaching. Since the concept of assessment literacy was first put forward by Stiggins. A number of researches in general education have been conducted on assessment literacy in order to find out whether teachers are prepared for and capable of conducting classroom assessment appropriately. At the early beginning of the 21 st century linguists began to pay attention to foreign language teachers’ assessment literacy. In 2009 a detailed discussion on language assessment literacy was launched by Taylor. Since then this topic begun to attract great attention from scholars in applied linguistics. Studies on language assessment literacy have been centered on the knowledge, skills and principles a language teacher should possess in order to be assessment literate, the development of the language testing and assessment course as well as the coursebooks used as well as other issues. However, very few studies have been done to explore what is going on in language classrooms and the level of language teachers’ actual knowledge about classroom assessment in mind. This study, therefore, is expected to explore even more in this area.The main objective of this study is to measure out the levels of both pre-service and in-service teachers’ language assessment literacy(LAL) and to discover whether there are any significant differences between the two groups in terms of LAL, and the possible underlying reasons for the differences are to be explored. To achieve this goal, an assessment on language classroom assessment literacy was conducted on two groups of subjects, followed by a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews. 116 pre-service teachers and 121 in-service teachers participated in this study. The in-service teachers are further divided into three subgroups, namely, junior high school teachers, senior high school teachers and college teachers. The per-service teachers consist of undergraduates and a few postgraduates. The instrument used in this study, which is, language assessment literacy questionnaire, was co-translated first, then pre-tested by a few students from a university, judged by four Ph D students majoring in language testing and assessment, and finally rejudged by two professors in this field. All that has been done was to ensure the reliability and validity of the study.The results of the quantitative data show that both the pre-service teachers and in-service teachers were unprepared in language classroom assessment, and there exists significant differences between the two groups. The open questions in the questionnaire, together with the interview reveal possible reasons for these differences.This study suggests a great need for and immediate efforts to improve the language assessment literacy of both pre-service teachers and in-service teachers. Pre-service teachers should be given more opportunities to learn knowledge on this aspect and instructors of language testing and assessment course should reform their teaching methods to get the knowledge on this aspect better understood and interested by targeted students. Teaches of all grades should be provided with professional training on language classroom assessment, and they should take their initiative to learn knowledge on this aspect as well, in order to conduct classroom assessment more appropriately.