On Assessing College Students’Oral English In China With Canadian Language Benchmarks

The practices of oral English teaching and oral English testing are both challenging, and many universities and teachers are not willing to sacrifice time or energy on oral English testing. Lots of people even have no idea about how to implement an oral English test. One of the reasons that this is happening is we don’t have a standard on oral English test. But on the other hand, the economy is developing at a high speed and the dependence among countries is getting more intimate. Thus the need for people with oral English competency is gradually on the rise. The contradiction between the slow development of oral English test and the spiraling demands of talents with good oral English makes us educators think more of the solution.The National Committee of College English decided to carry out oral English test in some key universities as a start, and then spread out at the other universities and colleges gradually. Though this is an ice-breaker, the oral test is not compulsory, and only those candidates who have scored85or over are qualified to take the oral test. Their standard is no where to be obtained, thus the students have no idea what to focus on when preparing for the oral test.The gist of the thesis is to try to employ the Canadian Language Benchmarks to assess the Chinese college students’ oral English to see if it suits and its backwash on the oral English teaching. But due to limited time and energy, the researcher only invited some of the students and foreign teachers from Guangdong Peizheng College. In the middle and at the end of each semester, an oral English test was held under the CLB, altogether there are3tests. Analysis on their washback is made on students learning oral English. Based on the oral English tests, some research has been done, the instruments included questionnaires (For students and for foreign teachers), classroom observation and interviews with students and foreign teachers. All analysis and conclusions are based on the research, thus the credibility of the research is guaranteed.The study shows that the CLB is suitable to be employed as the scale for college oral English test and it has positive washback on students learning practical oral English and teachers teaching.What’s worth mentioning is that the study is limited to only one college, more researches need to be done that the CLB is suitable all through the country. The researcher strongly believe that in order to eliminate deaf English and dumb English, the administrators of education have to make oral English a part of the key tests(CET-4, CET-6) to make oral English learning practical.