Research On The Effectiveness Of Authentic Assessment In ESP Training

English for Specific Purposes, (referred to as ESP) came into being as societies need complex and application-oriented personnel of a combination of English and professional skills. ESP characterizes itself in professional knowledge, teaching arrangements, teaching methods, teaching materials, etc., which differ from General English. One of the major purposes of ESP teaching is to develop students'ability to solve problems in real business environment. Therefore, the traditional language testing theory and methods can not meet the requirements of ESP training goal. ESP testing should be carried out in a real context by the real materials, which may properly present the students'communicative ability. In this thesis, an investigation was carried out with students of one Business English class at a vocational college with questionnaires and interviews. The survey unveiled the effectiveness of testing in real situations in ESP training.Business English is an important branch of English for Specific Purposes, with total common aspects of it. It is practical-oriented and career-combined, emphasizing the pragmatic competence. CNBECT (China National Business English Certification Testing) is designed to reflect the subjects'language proficiency in real business situations and to judge the English language skills for business. The feedback declared that the application of authentic testing is in line with the requirements of fostering objective of professional education. It is effective to judge students'comprehensive ability and to guide training.The whole dissertation is divided into six chapters:Chapter 1: The author gives a brief introduction about the development of ESP, analyses on learning necessity, and makes clear the relationship between BE and ESP;Chapter 2: An overview of language test, the differences between ESP and General English and the significance of this study;Chapter 3: Some basic notions related to authentic assessment and differences between it and the traditional testing method;Chapter 4: Proposing the idea of applying the authenticity test to ESP teaching process; its effect on language teaching and explaining the innovations of this dissertation;Chapter 5: Some elements concerning the empirical research are introduced, including the design of this study, subjects in the study, and procedure of the research; Chapter 6: Analysis of survey results and concluded that --- the authenticity test applied to ESP teaching is in line with the requirements of fostering objective of professional education. Finally, the pedagogical significance of the study is discussed and its limitations are mentioned.