International Journal of Education

The landscape of foreign language education in China is currently undergoing a cultural transition from a predominant “exam culture” to an emerging “assessment culture”, along with a paradigm shift from “assessment of language learning” to “assessment for language learning” within the field of foreign language assessment. In this dual transition, the Language Assessment Literacy (LAL) of foreign language teachers has emerged as a crucial topic for scholarly investigation. While existing literature has proposed a series of domestic theoretical frameworks of LAL, empirical studies on LAL of foreign language teachers across different educational stages remain limited. The present study adopts a mixed-methods approach, incorporating a large-scale questionnaire and group interview methodology to examine the LAL status of elementary school English teachers from eight provinces across China. Descriptive statistical analysis, independent t-test, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) are utilized for quantitative data analysis. Content analysis is employed for qualitative data analysis. Findings of the study demonstrate a general inadequacy in LAL among elementary school English teachers. Compared with male teachers, female teachers are found to place a particular emphasis on the emotional function of language assessment in class to promote language learning. Notable variations in LAL among different age groups of teachers are identified. Building on these findings, this study proposes targeted professional development interventions such as structured workshops to cultivate language assessment literacy (LAL) among elementary school English language teachers. The research contributes to scholarly discourse on fostering pedagogically robust foreign language teacher competencies in primary education contexts.

Foreign language education; Language assessment literacy; Elementary school English teachers