A Study Of Language Assessment Literacy Of Pre-service EFL Teachers

Over centuries,assessment has been mainly used for selection and accountability purposes around the world.Since the 21^st century,with the transformation of educational mode,educational assessment has taken profound changes;changing from the traditional testing culture to the assessment culture which targets at promoting teaching and enhancing learning.The assessment for learning advocated by the New Curriculum Reform has brought up new demands for the assessment literacy of EFL?English as Foreign Language?teachers in elementary education.In China,the research of teachers' language assessment literacy are centered on the framework of teachers' assessment literacy,the regional level of teachers' assessment literacy and language testing and assessment courses and other related topics.However,little research has been done to explore what is going on in language classrooms and the information about the knowledge,attitude,and awareness of the assessment a language teacher should possess.This study aimed at investigating the assessment attitude,awareness and knowledge of middle school pre-service EFL teachers;and observing their assessment skills and features in classroom.The research intended to answer these two questions:1)What are the assessment attitude be held and the assessment knowledge be perceived by pre-service EFL teachers? 2)What are the typical characteristics of classroom assessment of pre-service EFL teachers?In the present study,qualitative method was used to explore the language assessment literacy?LAL?of middle school pre-service EFL teachers.To begin with,it adopted an open-ended questionnaire to the respondents which were 16student-teachers in a graduate teacher education program of a university in Jiangxi Province.They were postgraduates and majored in English education.And then,the author tracked their intern-classes and chose ten of them to video-record their classes.Afterwards,these video recordings were transcribed into written language and eventually analyzed.Pre-service teachers' mainly-adopted ways of questioning,oralfeedback and the interactions between them and their students have been the focus of the present study.It is found that the level of language assessment literacy of middle school pre-service EFL teachers is generally high.They hold a positive attitude to assessment and have a relative high awareness of using assessment actively.It can be shown that they have acquired certain knowledge of assessment through their pre-service assessment course.However,their classroom assessment skills have yet to be improved.Through the close observation of their teaching videos,it is found that some pre-service teachers can use questions to stimulate students' interests by choosing questions closely related to students' life or their interest.Some other pre-service teachers can use assessment skills,such as pumping,repeating and constructive challenge method in questioning to promote the students' use of target language.They prefer to use display questions in class.While most of the middle school pre-service EFL teachers usually give students simple and short positive feedbacks,which can not meet students' needs of more detailed information about his or her performance.However,a few pre-service teachers can give oral feedback to students based on their individual differences.After practicing teaching in real context,pre-service EFL teachers may have further training needs on assessment.Based on these findings,this study gives some suggestions to improve the classroom assessment skills of middle school pre-service EFL teachers and assessment training of pre-service EFL teachers.