試用加拿大語言基準評測中國大學(xué)生英語口語

1、試用加拿大語言基準評測中國大學(xué)生英語口語1. Introduction1.1Research backgroundThe world is becoming relatively smaller to modem people, and the cooperationamong nations is becoming more frequent with cutting edge technologies replacing oldones. As we all know China is playing an increasingly more significant role in the

2、world. Thus communication in all fields is possible between China and other countries.English as tiie major communication medium among international communications isbecoming essential and crucial all through China. At the same time, we can t ignore thefact that most Chinese college students have be

3、en learning dumb English and deafEnglish due to all kinds of educational limitations. Since the major function of alanguage is communication, and 70 percent is communicated verbally，we can t let thecurrent situation continue, and let English education serve what s needed most.Though Chinese college

4、students may have mastered a large vocabulary and beadept at reading，they probably feel grueling when talking to native English speakers.The question，then, leads to increasing students performance in oral skills. How do weknow what level of oral English they are at? Give them a test.English testing

5、took place as soon as English teaching started. But the history of oralEnglish testing isn t as long. Because it s tough to be totally objective and reliable，oralEnglish testing was not started until 1940’s. Oral English wasn t valued, as it should havebeen. Although Oral English testing has m

6、ade its way in some areas in China in the pastyears, it s still limited to people going abroad for further studies or immigration and avery limited number of college students. The majority of students don t have a chance toknow where they stand at the test as they deserve.1.2Research purpose and sig

7、nificanceThe professional collegial context where this research was carried out is mostspecial. Guangdong Peizheng College has been putting lots of effort and fund innurturing students English competence. The school board believes it s for the students best to learn authentic English, Urns about 60

8、foreign teachers are hired each year fromnative English speaking countries. In order for the students to improve their English level，the college set up an organization called the English Education Cente/XEEC for short)，allfreshmen except English majors and arts majors, will be studying in the EEC fo

9、r one fullyear, with 8 periods of lessons (intensive reading and listening) given by ChineseEnglish teachers，and 4 periods of oral English lessons given by English speaking experts.Due to the fact that a number of Chinese English teacher have visited the university ofAlberta for a year and have had

10、access to lessons on the CLB, and most of them acceptthe idea, so they recommended that the oral English lessons be taught under thecurriculum developed under the CLB. The mission of the EEC is to help students to useEnglish skillfully, especially in oral English and listening. In order to facilitat

11、e the use ofactive and cooperative learning techniques，the college administration makes a concertedeffort to teach in small classes(l5-20students).…2. Literature Review2.1 An overview of oral English testTesting, in social life，is a worldwide feature. People have been tested for differentpurp

12、oses in different fields to prove their competence level or to gain credentials. Testshave become an essential means not only in sports，medial purposes, but also crackingcriminal cases，etc. It has gone far beyond the most restricted use of testing in theeducational field. Tests to see how a person p

13、erforms especially in relation to a thresholdof performance have become social norms and Mfill a gate keeping function in that theycontrol entry to many important social roles.It is a general belief that teaching itself is as much an art as it is a science. Noscience could be called science without

14、measurement, as we are all aware. Testing inlanguage is only one form of measurement. By their definitions，teaching and testingcould be closely linked, interacted and influenced with and by each other.Alderson, J.C. & D. Wall. (1993，in Alderson et al 1996:281) propose WashbackHypothesis before a

15、nybody and go on to postulate a series of other plausible alternativehypotheses within the context of EFL. The intention of the Hypothesis is to clarify theissues that washback studies must address. /….2.2 An overview of washbackIt s generally believed that tests affect teaching and learning,

16、 as stated by Aldersonand Wall (1993) that tests are held to be powerful determiners of what happens inclassroom. The phenomenon that exams influence teaching and learning is known aswashback or backwash. Although this is relatively a new topic in language education，washback has long been discussed

17、in general education (Wall 2000:500). This definitionwas later used in applied linguistics to refer to the particular influences that languagetesting, especially foreign language testing has on correspondent teaching and learning(Huang et al 2002:288). The term ‘washback，has several versions o

18、f definition inresearchers studies for particular purposes: a concept prominent in applied linguistics,referring to the extent to which the introduction and use of a test influences languageteachers and learners to do things they would not otherwise do tiiat promote or inhibitlanguage learning; (Mes

19、sick 1996:241); Washback unquestionably unites testing andteaching and learning no matter what it means in detail.3. Methodology.203.1Research goals.203.2Subjects.203.3Instruments.223.3.1Oral English tests scaled by the CLB.223.3.2Questionnaires.253.3.3A checklist of classroom observation.253.3.4Int

20、erview.264.Data Analysis and Discussion.274.1Questionnaires.274.1.1Questionnaire for students.274.1.2Post-test questionnaire for foreign teachers.394.2A list of class observations.464.3Interviews.475.Conclusion.495.1Main findings.495.2Implications.505.3Limitations of the study.514. Data Analysis and

21、 Discussion4.1 QuestionnairesThis question tries to probe into the deeper motivation why the students want tograsp good oral English, and it helps the students realize learning oral English isn t justtheir job，not just to finish what they are supposed to do，but following an internationaltrend and fa

22、ct that can t be changed. From the answer we can tell that most students haverealized that English is dominating the international communication which is a goodthing-This questions is trying to get the information of students putting what they haveleamt in practice, that is, apart from the classroom

23、，is there any chance they would speakEnglish at another time and another location. The statistics show that a quarter ofstudents have a fair chance to do that, only about 10 percent have a chance or put outtheir effort to use English regularly. It s disappointing to see that about 66 percent ofstude

24、nts have little or no chance to use their English, which makes it hard to be fluent inEnglish and hard to be skillful in English communication skills.ConclusionIn the research of assessing college students oral English with CLB through themeans of oral English tests, questionnaires, class observatio

25、ns and interviews atGuangdong Peizheng College，the following positive washback of the CLB have beenfound. First，about half of the students involved are willing to use English out of theclassroom，and tiiey have realized they themselves are the key to master good oralEnglish, a majority of them feel the inner motivation to grasp