A Study Of The Effectiveness Of Multiple Assessments In Extensive Reading For Vocational College Students

By the end of 2006, the number of vocational colleges in China has risen up to 1145 and the teaching quality of vocational colleges plays a great role in the whole higher education. The students and teaching objectives of vocational colleges require urgent change of traditional summative assessment.Western assessment theories have not been introduced to China until the 1980s. In China, the researches on assessment have problems in the aspects of the number of articles, research method and subjects. Fewer articles focus their studies on the extensive reading teaching of vocational college. However, students in vocational colleges do have problems such as lack of interest, confidence and learner autonomy. With problems in reading, students can hardly read up to the standard as set forth in class, they tend to lose their interest and confidence, which has negative influences on the improvement of reading ability and achievement.Therefore, the author proposes in this thesis an alternative solution, multiple assessments, to facilitate students'reading. Multiple assessments integrate diagnostic assessment, formative assessment and summative assessment and to certain degree realize the diversification in the contents, criteria and methods of assessment.This study was carried out in a vocational college, from September, 2009 to January, 2010. The subjects of this experiment study consisted of two classes of grade two in English department. Before the experiment, there was no significant difference between students on extensive reading achievements, learning interest and learner autonomy. During the experiment, the students were divided into the experimental group and the control group. Multiple assessments were conducted in the former while the later still adopted traditional summative assessment. Data collection tools of multiple assessments were test, questionnaire, observation, interview, portfolio, self-assessment and peer-assessment. After the experiment, the author made use of the t-test of SPSS10.0 to test the change on students'extensive reading achievement, interest and confidence. The findings show that conducting multiple assessments is more effective to improve students'achievement and learning interest. In addition, conducting multiple assessments can to certain degree encourage learner autonomy of students in vocational colleges. The comparison between Questionnaire I and Questionnaire II show that though the students in the experimental group become more active on class and carry out their learning plan better than before, the difference between the two groups are not significant from the perspective of statistic. The author analyzes the result from the factors such as students'age, characteristics, learning environment and the foster of learner autonomy. The result also shows that the experiment has its own limit in time, subjects and authentic questionnaire.Through the implementing of multiple assessments in the extensive reading class of a vocational college, the study enriches the practice of assessment reform and provides a new perspective of the reform in extensive reading teaching of vocational colleges.