Inter-cultural issues in testing Chinese students' writing

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Abstract

This paper looks at some of the inter-cultural issues involved in testing the writing proficiency of Chinese students applying for undergraduate and graduate programmes at the University of Warwick, UK, and other British universities. An inter-cultural understanding of the language testing experience, though rarely pursued within the language testing literature, is useful for two reasons. Firstly, a better understanding of what learners and teachers of another culture think about English language tests written within English-speaking countries is helpful for those teachers and examiners who are unfamiliar with that culture. Secondly, as a general principle, writing assessors need to become more actively involved in a process of inter-cultural dialogue, so that they better understand the students they are assessing. This involves an exchange of views with a variety of professional people from other cultures, as well as their own.

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