Magister

Chinese society in general has accepted the function of examinations as a fair indicator of students’ academic success. Although high-stake national/public examinations have always been criticized for the high pressure that they place on students and the possibility of distorting the nature of teaching to “teaching to the test”, they still play a pivotal role in directing Chinese students’ learning, determining their future careers, and assessing school effectiveness. This paper first presents a brief overview of Chinese examination-driven orientation assessment system, and then takes two national examinations as examples to delineate student learning assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) context China. The paper argues that: (1) public examinations play dual assessment functions which are selection and teaching and (2) new emphases in reforms of student assessment focus on making examination to be a better measure of student learning outcomes and making it serve teaching more effectively. The last part of paper sketches the major changes of student assessment in currently school practice.