Using Alternative Assessment Methods in Foreign Language Teaching. Case Study： Alternative Assessment of Business English for UniversityStudents.docVIP

Using Alternative Assessment Methods in Foreign Language Teaching. Case Study： Alternative Assessment of Business English for UniversityStudents 　　Yangtze University， Hubei Province 　　Abstract： Alternative assessment methods have proven to be a comprehensive tool for testing language learners， especially at university level. As strategies based on the permanent assessment of students’ linguistic level， the methods of alternative assessment such as the portfolio or the project， share - due to the amount and the complexity of information they involve - the characteristics of formative and summative evaluation. The present paper aims at sharing the author’s experience of using alternative assessment during the Business English course of university students， a type of assessment which， as presumed in the premises of the research， offered the opportunity of quality and comprehensive evaluation not only of the learners’ linguistic competence， but also of their communicative competence. 　　Keywords： alternative assessment， communicative competence， formative evaluation， permanent assessment. 　　一、Introduction 　　The main purpose of assessment ?C be it initial， mid-term or final ?C is a double one： on the one hand to provide learners with a corrective feedback， so that they might know their strong and weak points and on the other hand to rank students in an educational institution according to their performance. This second role of testing， to rank learners， makes the pre-testing activities of the assessor a specific importance， as the format of the test will trigger certain results. 　　Most linguistic tests are based on tasks assessing the student’s four main linguistic abilities developed by courses； reading， writing， listening and speaking， or in other words they test grammar， vocabulary， orthography. It is understandable then that students will prepare for obtaining good results in only certain directions of language learning. 　　The existence of more learning styles