Teaching, Learning and Assessing Students’ English Language Receptive Skills in Mongolia

In Mongolia, teachers’ attitudes towards large-scale educational assessments have been a largely uncovered area. English was deemed to be an official Second Language in Mongolia in 2005. However, it has not reached the goal of universal second language usage; therefore, it is still a Foreign Language in Mongolia. Research is needed to find out the issues behind the slow process of English language education and adoption. Also, little is known about how English language skills are taught currently. Research is needed into what is learned and assessed, especially the quality of teaching and learning fundamental skills. The role of receptive skills, which people’s communication is based on, needs to be developed through certain studies and research. In addition, a lot of tests and assessments are taken in schools for different purposes in Mongolia. English language instruction is more focused on testing than on the students’ learning process. This may be caused by the Educational assessment and accountability system, teachers’ instructional methodologies, students’ learning strategies, or other unknown factors that affect students’ learning achievement in Mongolia. Through my study, I tried to identify the issues and the reasons behind the instruction, learning and assessment of English language receptive skills (ELRS) in a Mongolian metropolitan area. Also, the study aimed to recommend some important considerations for English language teachers and school administrators to improve English language education. Result showed that primary and secondary school teachers have similar views on assessment as being important for improving the quality of education. However, the assessment system is used to evaluate schools and is expected to increase efforts made by teachers, but it doesn’t effectively support students’ competence in learning English. The current assessment implementation may lead to teachers teaching and test taking practices for the sole purpose of increasing students’ test score. English language is one of the subjects that included in the school achievement test, therefore, English language teachers might reduce their instructional content and tend not to use effective teaching strategies so that their students’ learning strategies may not be developed. Thus, English teachers everyday practice might mismatch because of no significant correlations between teaching and learning strategies in the classroom and the different factors which might be the assessment accountability system and its influence in teaching, students’ lack of learning strategy usage, older students’ attitude, and parents’ low education level of English language, school online and computer availability for students’ learning