A Reflection and Exploration of assessing Chinese Language Education in a University Course

Assessment is an important component that has a direct impact on the contents of education, but Chinese language educators in current universities do not seem to draw much attention to the assessment. Thus, the author focuses on the matter of assessing Chinese language education, by investigating in what ways universities currently assess Chinese language courses and what directions should be taken for the future ideal assessment. In addition, this study introduces substantial contents and items of assessment through presenting a new type of a transcript. An assessment method presented in this study is first to check students��� levels at the beginning of a semester and then establish learning goals by letting students know learning objectives and assessing method including grading criteria and points. The suggesting evaluation method in this study is divided into five items: ���reading,������listening,��� ���writing,��� ���speaking,��� and ���memorization��� and then students are taught detailed evaluative methods and contents in each item. Evaluation is done every week and there are no separate mid-term and final exams. During the period of mid-term and final exams, in other words, week 8 and week 16, students instead have individual meetings with a professor to discuss how much progress they have made and what they need to do for the further development of their own learning. Moreover, professors keep records of these detailed evaluative components in a new type of a transcript for a systematic guidance of a student���s learning. Although this evaluative method does not fully suit current environments of Chinese language education in the contemporary universities, hopefully, this study can be applied to each university, if appropriately modified, following own educational environments. It will be great if this study contributes to spurring interests in assessing Chinese language education. assessing method