Observation And Analysis Of English Teachers’ Application Of Performance Assessment In Senior High Schools

General Senior High School Curriculum Standards English(2020)emphasizes that assessment of ELT should be centered on the subject core competencies and address students’ classroom performance.Aiming to measure students’ ability to apply their knowledge to solve problems or complete tasks,performance assessment is an appropriate tool to assess students’ development of language abilities and competencies in senior high school English reading lessons that can develop students’ multiple skills with rich background knowledge of the theme.However,performance assessment in English subject still has the problem of low quality and insufficient effectiveness.Based on this,this study focuses on the application of performance assessment by teachers in senior high school English reading lessons.Therefore,this study tries to address two research questions:(1)What types of performance assessment do teachers apply in senior high school English reading lessons?(2)What are the characteristics of teachers’ application of performance assessment in senior high school English reading lessons in terms of performance tasks,scoring rubrics and feedback of performances?As a qualitative research,this study adopts classroom observation as the research method,taking 10 senior high school English exemplary reading lessons as the observational subject and conducts an in-depth analysis of performance assessment in four aspects: types of assessment,performance tasks,scoring rubrics,and teachers’ feedback.Results of the observational data reveal that:(1)senior high school English teachers mainly use two types of performance assessments,Brief introduction & report and Maps& charts making,taking students’ oral language output as the main form of performance;(2)Performance tasks designed by English teachers have good clarity and feasibility and meet the needs of the English curriculum objectives and content;(3)Teachers are able to give timely feedback linked to the goals and requirements of the task,share information about results and strengths of students’ performance,and provide praise that directed to performances and tasks.However,the following significant problems still exist in the application of performance assessment by senior high school English teachers:(1)Lack of adequate students’ performance and necessary adaptations for English underachievers in performance tasks;(2)Lack of specific and clear scoring rubrics in performance assessment;(3)Lack of depth,clarity and the attention to the process and weakness of students’ performance in teachers’ feedback.In order to improve teachers’ ability to design and apply performance assessment,this study proposes specific suggestions for improvement in response to the existing problems.When applying performance assessment,teachers are advised to: design performance assessment activities rationally and grasp the limited time for students to fully perform;set stratified tasks and pay attention to the participation of English underachievers;actively learn related theories to develop clear and quantifiable scoring rubrics;provide clear and specific descriptive feedback and pay attention to the process and shortcomings of students’ performance.In addition,the education authorities should actively conduct training activities and build teacher communities on performance assessment to promote mutual learning and communication.