Improving Vocational School Students' Participation In Intensive Reading Class Through Authentic Assessment

Educational researchers have made some studies on the teaching, learning and assessment. They attach great importance to the feedback of assessment to education and teaching. How to establish an overall and scientific assessment on the learning procedures and results of vocational school students in English learning and how to bring its functions of encouragement and promoting the development of students into full play are what we have to face and deal with when we confront the current situation of vocational schools.In this thesis the author suggests to improve vocational school students' participation in intensive reading class through authentic assessment. Authentic assessment permits students to benefit from mistakes and to improve their level of understanding and performance. Furthermore, it establishes an individual or cooperative reward structure, which fosters motivation to learn to a greater extent than other systems (Biehler & Snowman, 1997). In authentic assessment, students' performance is measured against the stated objectives rather than against the performance of other students.An experiment with qualitative and quantitative study is conducted in two classes in a vocational school. The data collected from questionnaires, informal interviews, classroom observations and the final examination are analyzed to see whether there are prominent differences between the treatment group and control group. The results of the analysis and the learners' feedback suggest that bringing authentic assessment into English classroom can be beneficial for English learning and teaching. The findings reveal authentic assessment has an active effect on students' English learning. This paper attempts to illustrate the effect of assessment theoretically and practically.