Classroom Management and Learner Assessment
Domain 5 - Classroom management and learner assessment
This domain tests whether you can create orderly, participatory Chinese classrooms and use assessment to improve learning, not just assign grades.
Core rules
- Routines and expectations: Establish entry, grouping, material and attention routines in simple target language; consistency reduces off-task behaviour.
- Target-language use: Use comprehensible Chinese for management (请看这里, 两人一组), with brief L1 support only when it removes a genuine barrier.
- Interaction and grouping: Vary whole-class, pair, group and individual work; assign roles; monitor rather than sit at the desk.
- Feedback timing: Correct form-focused errors during accuracy work; during fluency work, note errors and address them later. Recasts, elicitation and clarification requests are less intrusive than constant interruption.
- Assessment types: Formative assessment (exit tickets, quizzes, observation checklists) guides teaching; summative assessment (tests, projects) reports achievement. Both need validity, reliability and fairness.
- Rubrics: Use analytic criteria such as task completion, fluency, accuracy, pronunciation and interaction; describe levels concretely.
Worked example
An oral course values spontaneous speaking, but the final test is a memorized dialogue marked only for grammar. This is a validity problem: the assessment does not measure the course objective. A better design is an information-gap pair task marked with a rubric: task completion 40%, fluency 20%, accuracy 20%, pronunciation 10%, interaction 10%. Reasoning: the task requires spontaneous use, the rubric makes criteria transparent, and the weighting matches the stated outcomes. Reliability improves if two raters moderate samples or use recorded performances.
Traps
- Correcting every error during a fluency task, which changes the task into accuracy practice.
- Using assessment only at the end; no formative evidence means no adjustment.
- Rubrics with vague labels such as “good” or “excellent” and no descriptors.
- Confusing reliability (consistency) with validity (measuring the intended construct).
- Managing behaviour through humiliation or public ranking instead of routines and dignity.