The 5th Annual International Conference of the Asian Association for Language Assessment (AALA) (AALA 2018)

238 / 2018-04-15 11:31:38

Assessing Strategic Competence of Young Language Learners in Oral Communication Using a Scenario-based Self-assessment Scale

strategic competence,scenario-based assessment,self-assessment,scale development,young language learner

Plenary track > Principles and methodology of developing standards for language assessment

Language researchers have long strived to define what constitutes the underlying language ability and uncover the inner mechanism of language use. Strategic Competence (SC) is a non-linguistic component added by scholars to interactively integrate internal language competence/knowledge with external communication contexts. The principles and approaches of assessing SC, however, remain largely underexplored. This study aims to conceptualize Chinese young language learners’ SC in oral communication and operationalize it into a learning-oriented assessment instrument.
By reviewing relevant literature on language ability theories, information-processing theories in cognitive psychology and existing SC-based research, this study tentatively considers SC the mental capacity of activating and orchestrating brain’s information-processing system to select and assemble memory-stored knowledge into meaningful use. It comprises a set of metacognitive strategies and is susceptible to contextual constraints and users' affective schema (Bachman & Palmer, 2010).
This study selects scenario-based self-assessment as the target instrument. The reason is twofold – (a) being part of an intricate human attribute system, the current SC concept is too heuristic to be behind any high-stakes decision-making when being assessed individually, learning-oriented assessment is thus considered more appropriate; (b) scenario-based assessment situates candidates in familiar, concrete and specific contexts, it is thus more suitable for eliciting strategy data from youngsters whose developing cognitive ability restrains them from providing retrospective information of what they might have done in abstract or general situations.
To develop this instrument, this study combines intuitive, qualitative and quantitative approaches, namely (a) a literature review to develop a descriptive scheme for the target construct, (b) document analyses to collect descriptors, (c) a round of expert consultation to revise drafted scale, (d) two separate pre-tests (i.e., student workshop & questionnaire pilot) to examine scale's clarity, readability and appropriateness (e) a large-scale survey to examine construct model and scale quality using advanced statistical methods (i.e., SEM & Rasch model) and (f) semi-structured interviews to collect teachers' perceptions. The above (a), (b) and (c) have completed preliminary analyses. About 200 descriptors were collected and categorized. Assessment scenarios were built upon 4 empirically-selected representative English-speaking activities. The remaining steps will be conducted in the following months.
Facing a rapidly globalized world, the importance of being strategic language learners and users is increasingly recognized. By exploring the SC construct and operationalizing it into an assessment instrument, this study might not only shed light on the nature of underlying language ability but facilitate SC-based pedagogical interventions in China's English education.