Assessing the English Language Writing of Chinese Learners of English

This book focuses on the assessment of English language writing in
China mainland, the territories of Hong Kong and Macau, and Taiwan. The
first part of the book describes how writing in English has been
assessed in Chinese contexts in the past 25 years, and how it continues
to be assessed at present. The second part of the book presents reports
of work such as formative classroom-based assessment, feedback-based or
feedback-led approaches, learning-oriented assessment, portfolios, as
well as the important issue of teacher professional development in
writing assessment. This two-part division relates to and reflects what
has been happening in writing assessment internationally, in the UK from
the 1940s, and in the US in the past 25 years.

The use of English
for international business communication, for international political
negotiations and its rapidly increasing use as a medium of instruction
in some subject areas has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of
Chinese L1 speakers who are learning and being assessed in English. This
is often done with an emphasis on reading and writing.  The vast
majority of assessments of English language writing are done through
large-scale direct testing that uses simple prompts/tasks and short
writing samples. This book explores best practices in assessing the
writing in English of native speakers of Chinese.