I am an assistant development manager for Asset Languages and am
responsible for developing the Chinese assessments.
I have been reading with interest the discussion about Mandarin Chinese
GCSE and am anxious that Asset language tests should not cause the same
difficulties both for teachers and learners. As you may know, the principle
behind the Asset Languages Assessment scheme is the recognition of
achievement in language learning. We want, therefore, the assessments to
be as positive an experience as possible for those involved.
With Chinese we are aware of many of the issues involved in learning it as
a foreign language which in many cases seems to be make it a more demanding
language to learn than other languages taught in the UK such as French or
German. While we are trying to make the tests across different languages
as comparable as possible we are also anxious to make the tests do-able for
people at different stages of learning the language. At present, we are
involved in pre testing the tests which will help us to determine the level
of difficulty of the tests and locate items on a linear scale. In addition
to this, we are also reliant on the feedback and suggestions from those who
are involved in the teaching of Chinese in different contexts in the UK. I
think this would be a useful forum to raise any issues or make any
suggestions that might be useful to the development of our tests.
I would be interested to hear your comments and suggestions.
Juliet Wilson
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