Developing classroom language assessment benchmarks for Japanese teachers of English as a foreign language

Abstract

IntroductionSince the Japanese government has called for English to be taught through English (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2003), there has been increasing interest in English language classrooms in upper secondary schools. The government has proposed English proficiency scores that Japanese teachers of English should attain, but has not yet specified clearly what English language use should be like in the classroom.Case descriptionThis case study describes the theoretical aspect of the development of a benchmark assessment for use in English language classrooms with Japanese teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study first defines teacher language proficiency, the use of the foreign language in the classroom, with particular attention to teacher language awareness (Andrews, 2007) as a bridging mechanism between pedagogical content knowledge and the foreign language proficiency of Japanese teachers of EFL. This definition of teacher language proficiency is further elaborated in terms of the legitimate use of benchmark assessments in English language classrooms in Japan with a thorough literature review of L2 benchmark assessments in other parts of the world.Discussion and EvaluationThe present case study examines the ideal assessor conditions after thorough review on assessor bias from the language testing/assessment research, while the development of assessment benchmarks for use in Japan is discussed based on a high-stakes benchmark assessment for teachers of EFL in Hong Kong. The proposed benchmarks acknowledge the complexity of classroom English use, thus employing four different scale types to accommodate the multifaceted characteristics of teacher language proficiency.ConclusionsThe current case study concludes with the exploration of tasks remaining for the future development of our benchmark assessments for use in ongoing professional development.