Students’Learning Behavior and Guidance from Asses...
It is widely agreed that current students tend to plan their study strategically according to assessment structures(Biyikli，2016;Hattie，2015;Hunt and Chalmers，2012;Ramsden，2003).Since tests and exams are largely believed to perfectly resemble the knowledge content and learning skills of a subject，planning study in line with the assessments is the learning strategies students“should”pick up.In addition，assessments are usually key elements for student to calibrate approaches to learning and study time.At the same time，the classroom learning may also affect the time spared by them on studying(Biyikli，2016).It seems to us that the type of assessment questions of LCS further strengthens the inclination towards an English-taught-Chinese language as all its academic level reading and writing activities are conducted in English while Chinese is used for more casual activities such role play，or much less formal or much shorter reading and writing activities.
Besides，in the study design，verbs used to describe the expectation learning outcomes has great effect to direct the teaching and learning strategies of teachers and students(David，2002;Popenici and Millar，2015).Unfortunately，there seems obvious inconsistence between the wording of expecting learning outcomes and the assessment structures.Verbs associated with the Chinese language components are“use”and“apply”，targeting the language application activities，while verbs associated with cultural studies are“understand”，“recognize”and“aware”which refer to recalling facts and factual knowledge.
However，the cultural components are assessed in English language by reading and writing a 600-word written report，accounting for 25 out of total 50 points.Although the Chinese language components are also assessed in the form of language application，responding listening and speaking questions，and reading and writing in Chinese，the writing tasks include answering questions and a 100-to 150-character report.The requirement is much lower than the questions answered in English language.
Therefore，the emphasis of teaching and learning can easily shift from Chinese language learning towards English language based cultural study.This may leave a dangerous signal to students that they do not need to learn Chinese language to successfully graduate the VCE Chinese LCS.