Series Editors' Preface
Pedagogical Content Knowledge for English Language Teachers is a series that aims to provide a comprehensive knowledge base for busy classroom teachers. As the name suggests, the series covers issues related to the nature of language competence and how this competence is best taught, learned and assessed. It is hoped that, armed with this broad range of pedagogical content knowledge, ESL/EFL teachers will be able to meaningfully interpret the targets of teaching, learning and assessment, diagnose and solve problems in the teaching process, and grow professionally in the meantime.
The series includes the following seven broad areas:
1) Principles of language teaching
2) Curriculum and targets of teaching
3) Teaching language skills and knowledge
4) Teaching methodology and teaching tools
5) Testing and assessment
6) Language learning
7) Teacher as researcher
Unlike other books that aim for a similar knowledge base, this series attempts to be a digest version that bridges between theories and practice. It also aims to offer easy reading and inexpensive texts that teachers will find easily accessible and applicable. To achieve these aims, all books in this series are written in simple English or Chinese. Each book in this series is authored by an acknowledged authority on the topic. It includes a brief introduction to theories plus a brief review of major research findings. The main text, however, focuses on how the theories and research can be applied to the ESL/ EFL classroom.
In addition to the print copy for each book, an e-book version will also be available. Short videoclips may also be made available at the publisher's website where some authors introduce their books.
Besides English language teachers who teach ESL/EFL at secondary and primary schools, target readership of this series also includes trainee teachers on short and intensive training programmes. Preservice teachers who are studying for their MA TESOL/Applied Linguistics and Year 3/4 English majors who aspire to be English language teachers should find the series very useful as well.
Teachers' assessment literacy plays a pivotal role in their day-to-day teaching, when they use high-stakes standardized tests, interpret test data or implement low-stakes classroom-based teacher assessment. Language teachers' assessment literacy is becoming even more important now to ensure the success of the current reform in English language education in China. What are the essential components of language assessment literacy that teachers should develop? This is the question《中小学英语教师语言评价素养参考框架》aims to answer. Based on an extensive review of the international literature on assessment literacy and the key concepts of language assessment (e.g., what to assess, how to assess, why to assess), Lin Dunlai proposes seventeen reference points and over 400 can-do statements within these seventeen reference points. We hope teachers will find them useful to self-assess their language assessment literacy, and we are also looking forward to reading more empirical studies to validate the rank order of these can-do statements in the EFL context in China.
Peter Yongqi Gu and Guoxing Yu
Series Editors