The impact of assessment change on language learning strategies: views of a small group of Chinese graduate students

Chinese students embarking on further studies within an English-speaking higher education environment face significant changes in assessment. This study, undertaken at University of Warwick (UK), reports on Chinese graduate students’ retrospective views of their developing language learning strategies, in the light of changes in assessment during their courses. The study charts the students’ perceptions of their own experiences over one year of study, beginning with their preparatory English course and ending upon completion of their Masters’ degree programme. The findings of the study show that the College English Test (CET) in China remains fixed within the learners’ mind-sets, at least in the early stages of their study, but that greater attention is paid to process-oriented learning strategies as their academic studies progress. The increased use of process-oriented strategies is closely connected with the nature of the changing learning environment available to the students, as well as the increased use of formative assessment. Findings from the interview data suggest that the learners demonstrate a variety of approaches to their studies, and that their strategies are, in all likelihood, shaped as much by individual, contextual and pragmatic factors as cultural ones. In spite of this diversity, participants do not seem to recognize the potential transferability of product-oriented learning strategies to their later academic studies