Testing Chinese students: the problem of the writing component.

Gerard Sharpling (EAP Tutor, Warwick University)

My paper was divided into the following broad sections. I have indicated the general drift of the argument in each section.

A: CONTEXT

The number of Chinese students at the University of Warwick and elsewhere has risen dramatically in recent years. This of course has important implications for testing. For every student that is accepted as a result of a language test, many more fail to gain acceptance. This has often profound implications for the student both at a practical and psychological level.

Testing, meanwhile, is often perceived as relating to the maintenance of standards. It is thus a gate-keeping device, and closely connected with the 'policing' and 'standardisation' of language. However, if one merely views tests in this way, they will not shed much light on the experience of learning, and in particular, writing.

Looking at tests written by students is an unprecedented opportunity to gain insights into the strategies and experiences of writing. Behind every test paper there lies a human being.

B: AIMS

• To look at how what we know about writing tests in recognised proficiency tests can inform our knowledge of Chinese learners’ writing;
• In turn, to hint at how our understanding of test development may be enhanced by a better understanding of Chinese learners.

C: LITERATURE REVIEW: CULTURAL FACTORS WHICH MAY HELP OR HINDER STUDENTS IN THEIR WRITING TEST PERFORMANCE

In investigating literature relating to Chinese learners, beliefs of theorists (both British and Chinese) seem to be situated somewhere between the following extreme polarities:

a) Writing and rhetoric are essentially ideological constructs, so the writing of Chinese learners reflects set patterns of thought

or

b) Individual variety exists between writing regardless of the nationality of the writer, and it is wrong to discuss Chinese writers of English as a group;

a) Discourse features such as organisation, topic choice and paragraph organization are direct products of a given set of socio-political circumstances

or

b) The attribution of a national style of writing to a given set of socio-political circumstances is wrong, and says more about the widespread cultural construction of colonialism than it does about students

In short, the division of the debate is as follows:

a) National characteristics exist and make a difference;

or

b) It is wrong to prioritise a focus on nationality as it makes it too easy for teachers and testers to have preconceived ideas about nationality groups.

D: WAYS OF INVESTIGATING TESTS

Writing tests can be investigated in several ways:

• Statistical/ analytical approach

This can be useful. Its main value lies in the ability to monitor student performance and to encourage equal opportunities. However, grouping according to nationality is not always useful. It is perhaps better to combine nationality with other groupings (gender, age, etc).

• Text analysis approach:

Text analysis is useful in that it allows writing to be considered more carefully in terms of its strategies. Sometimes the notion of 'interlanguage' is used to set up a contrastive structural and rhetorical analysis of writing tasks, but it has the disadvantage of providing an overt focus on weaknesses. It is an error-driven approach. It is also important to consider the strengths of a piece of writing. of course.

In my presentation, I referred to several examples taken from tests. These cannot be used on the Web site for security reasons.

• Student experience approach:

It is useful to investigate how students feel about the writing component of language tests and their experience of taking these tests. In doing so, Chinese students often seemed unwilling to criticise the tests, though one or two dissenting voices were located: e.g. 'A good result does not necessarily guarantee a smooth study life'.

Students, on the other hand, accept that the writing part of a test is something they can graduate to. As such they have no real reason to question the tests.

• Tutor experience approach:

It is also useful to interview experienced teachers working with students of the nationality groups who are taking the tests. In discussing with Chinese teachers of English, several issues were raised: the need for students to have patterns; the role of memorization and rote learning; the reluctance to discuss controversial tropics because of insufficient linguistic skills; fear of making mistakes.

E: CONCLUSION: THE WRITING TESTS OF TOMORROW?

This topic of writing tests needs greater debate:

• Large number of students who are doing the tests show that they are an important issue.
• The problem of learners in taking these tests successfully may be due not so much to national learning style as to what is viewed as valuable in writing performance.
• It is easy to over-emphasise accuracy at the expense of fluency.
• It is easy to formulate too many simplistic value-judgements about national writing characteristics. This is all the worse when we are looking at what students CANNOT do rather than what they CAN do.

REFERENCES

Alderson, J. Charles and Dianne Wall. Language Test Construction and Evaluation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bachman, Lyle F. and Adrian S. Palmer. Language Testing in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cooper, Charles R. and Lee Odell. 1999. The Role of Teachers' Knowledge about Text, Learning and Culture. Illinois: National Council for Teachers of English.

Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Huang, Jianyi. 1997. Chinese Students and Scholars in American Higher Education. London, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Pennycook, Alistair. 1998. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London and New York: Routledge.

Podis, Leonard A. and JoAnne M. Podis. 1999. Working with Student Writers: Essays on Tutoring and Teaching. New York: Peter Lang.

Swan, Michael and Bernard Smith. 1987. Learner English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Watkins, David A. and John B.Biggs. 1996. The Chinese Learner: Cultural, Psychological and Contextual Influences. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre.

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Wolcott, Willa and Sue M. Legg. 1998. An Overview of Writing Assessment: Theory, Research and Practice. Illionois: National Council of Teachers of English.

Wong, Lornita Yuen-Fan. 1992. Education of Chinese Children in Britain and the USA. Clevedon, Philadelphia and Adelaide: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

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