Teachers and Non-Teachers Perceptions of a Chinese Learner’s Oral Performances

This study explores whether teachers differ from non-teachers (naïve native speakers) in their perceptions of a learner’s oral performances. The oral language performances of an American university student in a fourth-year Chinese class were videotaped. Descriptive items were generated for use in evaluating the learner’s performances. Then 343 Chinese teachers and non-teachers used these items to evaluate the performances. The data were analyzed by means of exploratory factor analysis and analysis of variance. No significant differences were found between teachers and non-teachers in their rating criterion patterns. This result suggests that experience as a teacher does not necessarily out weight culturally-influenced perceptions. The implication is that experts in language assessment should make studying the underlying perceptual judgments of native speakers in the assessment of oral performance a top priority