| In2000, China’s Ministry of Education issued a new National English-teachingCurriculum for English Majors in Universities (NECEMU) in which, interpreting was listedfor the first time as a compulsory course for all undergraduates majoring in English. Sincethen, both oral interpreting and written translation are widely taught in universities at bothundergraduate and postgraduate levels in China. The new curriculum attempts to focus onfollowing issues: student-centered theory, task-based strategy, autonomous learning,multi-skill based pedagogy, and varied assessment systems. The rising interest in relevantpedagogy and research on interpreting studies is a natural by-product of this reform.Assessment, as the important method of evaluating students’ achievements andencouraging deep learning and conceptual understanding, is encouraged to be approached invaried forms in the new NECEMU(2000). Current educational practice in interpretingstresses the development of a new form of assessment to train students’ autonomous learningskills. One potentially valuable approach to train these learning skills is the implementationof formative assessment. During the process of formative assessment, students’ performanceis being assessed throughout the whole learning process and a subsequent judgment will bemade according to the students’ performance and progress. Additionally, students’ potentialcircumstances are being further considered as feedback which is given as a vital part innarrowing the gap between current learning and desired goal. Feedback–a core issue informative assessments could improve learning efficiency as well. Therefore, with thesupport of performance-based comments and explicit recipe for future action, motivationand self confidence are more likely to be enhanced. On the other hand, it is also valuable forteachers to diagnose students’ learning and making proper instructional decisions.Nevertheless, in Chinese examination-oriented education system, compared with summativeassessment, the application of formative assessment is still in a low frequency.The first aim of this study is to investigate the current situation of interpreting classmanagement and assessments in undergraduate English major interpreting classrooms. The second aim is expected to explore practical and effective formative assessment so as toevaluate the combined skills and the mastery of target language knowledge in Chineseundergraduate interpreting class settings. The last aim is to check to what extent the specialdesigned tasks (Appendix C and D) and the feedback (Appendix G) will deal with theexisting challenges and benefit participants for the future learning.In order to achieve these goals, this study intends to explore a practicalapproach-formative assessment when assessing interpreting skills in undergraduateinterpreting classes, by piloting two special designed tasks. During the designing stage,several features such as textbook-based, multi-level combined, authentic will be taken intoaccount.From this independently-constructed test, formative interpreting assessment researchis carried out with different findings which are summarized as follows:(1) Applyingformative assessment methodologies is a feasible approach to handle the challenges facedby teacher of large classes;(2) owing to the rises in importance of feedback in learning, animmediate positive feedback with adequate suggestions will formatively shape candidates’learning habits and firmly consolidate the learning effect;(3) Formative assessment canassist motivated and independent learners, as the primary purpose of formative assessmentis not merely on the results and grades but also on the improvement of study skills andmethodologies.The research results show that in collecting information of current situations in classroomspeaking assessments, the number of the teachers investigated is not large enough. It ishoped that this paper can make a modest contribution to clarifying some of those importantmethodological issues and their connection with research practice. And at the same time canshed some light on China’s English-major students’ oral interpreting teaching and research. |
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