FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN L 2 CLASSROOM IN CHINA : THE CURRENT SITUATION , PREDICAMENT AND FUTURE

With the reform of English education in China since 2001, formative assessment (FA) has found its way into the key educational policy documents such as National English Curriculum Standards for Basic Education (NECS for BE) (MoE, 2001 & 2011), National English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School (NECS for SHS) (MoE, 2003) and College English Curriculum Requirements (CECR) (MoE, 2004 & 2007) and therefore aroused the interests from both researchers and teachers. To understand FA development in China over the past 12 years, a synthesis study was conducted to analyze the current situation and predicament of FA in China based on the published FA articles in Chinese journals and educational newspapers from 2001 to 2012 and the published FA monographs and unpublished Ph.D.dissertations collected from various sources so far. The study shows FA is inadequately researched, poorly understood and improperly implemented in China. It is believed that the predicament of FA may be attributable to a variety of factors such as inadequate financial support, lack of quality research into various aspects of FA, imbalance of quality research focus, limited knowledge of the latest developments of FA, the shortage of L2-related FA research, the tension between FA and Summative Assessment (SA) in the dominant testing culture of China, the time-consuming nature of FA and lack of professional FA training. To solve these problems, by drawing on the local context and international experiences, this paper puts forward the following suggestions: (1) More financial investment supporting balanced quality research into important issues of FA; (2) Clarification of FA concept; (3)Study of FA in relation to underlying L2theories; (4)Promotion of student SA performance throughFA; (5) Development of ready-to-use FA; and (6) Strengthening professional development for FA. The context-based proposal for FA could provide a reference for other contexts similar to China, especially the Asian countries in terms of economical development and/or educational culture.

Katakunci: Penilaian formatif di Cina, usulan berbasis konteks, penelitian penilaian formatif Since Bloom, Hastings, &. Madaus (1971) borrowed the idea "formative" coined by Scriven (1967) for program evaluation and brought it into classroom assessment, formative assessment (FA hereafter) and its effect on learning has gained increasingly wide recognition around the world to which Black and Williams review (1998) made the most contribution.In 2001, the concept of FA was written into the National English Curriculum Standards (NECS) for the first time and then into NECS for senior high schools (2003) and College English Curriculum Requirements (CECR) (MoE, 2004(MoE, & 2007))and was highlighted in their updated versions.These documents stress the guiding function of assessment, distinguish the difference between FA and summative assessment (SA) and encourage teachers to use both in their daily practice.Thanks to the recommendation and promotion for FA in these national official discourses, many scholars and researchers have started their research into FA theories and practice either independently or funded by educational authorities on various levels.However, due to various factors, the development of FA in China is meeting its bottleneck.Though it is agreed among administrators, researchers and teachers that FA is valuable for improving student learning, they show limited understanding of FA, let alone implementing it properly in their local settings (Chen, 2012, Huang 2010, Jin 2010).Based on the analysis of relevant articles gained from academic journals and educational newspapers as well as monographs and Ph.D. dissertations collected from various resources, the current study attempts to investigate the current situation and predicament of FA in China and put forward suggestions for future development of FA by drawing on international experiences with reference to Chinese educationalcontexts.

METHOD
In order to have an overview of the FA research and practice in China, three types of materials were searched and the following were obtained: (1) Articles: 1958 articles obtained under the following searching conditions: Theme: Formative A mix method of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis was used in this synthesis study.Based on the statistic data of the three types of literature, the quantitative method aims to analyze the macro-situation of FA in China and the qualitative method tends to analyze the current specific problems of FA from a micro perspective.With reference to the findings in both analyses, suggestions are made for future FAdevelopment in the Chinese context.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
In order to attain the current research situation in FA, based on the statistic data of FA articles, monographs and Ph.D. dissertations, an analysis is made regarding the number of works in each year (Table 1), the types of journal articles (Table 2) and the number of key foreign language journal articles according to course type (Table 3).Luo, 2003;Yu, 2004;Wang &Xie, 2004;Cao, Zhang & Zhou, 2004;Li, 2005;Zhou & Qin, 2005;Yang, Xu&Yu, 2006;Wang, 2006;Xiao & Wang, 2007;Li, 2008;Wang & Sun, 2009;He, 2011; Tang &Wu 2011.Construct of FA system and working model Tang, 2006;Huang, 2010;Liu, Zhang & Hu, 2011;Li, 2011;Wen, 2011;Yang, 2012. Validity and reliability of FA Li &Zeng, 2008；Li, 2008.2012) reexamined the concept of FA in relation to curriculum and learning theories and proposed a cybernetic approach to looking at FA, arriving at the conclusion that all assessments are FA.This perspective can find its origin in French literature (Bonniol&Vial, 1997) and Cao (2012)gave it a systematic expansion and enriched our understanding of FA.

Study of FA policy and implementation
However, these developments of FA at both home and abroad haven't been echoed by FA policy and classroom implementation.Huang (2010) surveyed 20 universities for their implementation of FA in college English and had two findings: (1) they varied from one another in attributingFA as part of the students' final performance ranging from 20% to 50%.(2) The nontesting FA like teachers' comment on students' assignments were given less importance, accounting for only 10% of the final grade.However, testing-type FA occupied a large proportion of final grade with 25% for mid-term test and 10%-15% for unit test.Chen's (2012) research investigated two universities (one key university and one non-key university) and analyzed institutional response to national requirements of FA and teachers' response to institutional specification of FA.The study revealed that the existing understanding of FA on both institutional and teacher's levels was quite poor.Similar to Huang's (2010) finding, FA was interpreted as process assessment and implemented as part of summative assessment because the performance would be graded and then added to final performance for reporting.Jin (2010)did a questionnaire survey with 45 teachers from 25 universities across 16 provinces and cities.She found that teachers used less of the typical FA assessment instruments such as students' diaries and portfolios.Teachers believed that FA was conducive to teaching and learning but admittedat the same time the difficulty with FA implementation and called for more professional training.
Generally speaking, FA is not well practiced in China and the main reasons are poor know-how of FA on various levels and heavy workload of FA on teachers (Li, 2008, Li, 2012).It is believed that "Policy can encourage the building of stronger bridges between research, practice and policy by: investing in training for research literacy for practitioners, as well as policy officials; developing "best-practice" databases and centers to catalogue and disseminate the results of research; and, investing in support for further research (OECD, 2005, pp.90)."Butpolicy-related research in China are confined to survey of institution policy and its implementation.Little efforts have been made to explore the policy above institutional level and how the policies on different levels help coordinate research and practice.

Characteristics, principles, methods of FA
The largest proportion of FA study discourse concerns the characteristics, principles and methods of FA.For characteristics, most of the studies attempted to contrast FA with SA and therefore highlighted the timing, frequency and emphasis on process as the distinguishing features of FA (Luo, 2003, Yu, 2004, Wang &Xie, 2004).These studies are generally of introductory nature, only simply sketching the features without exploring the rationale behind.What is more, they failed to follow the latest characterization of FA.As a matter of fact, more comprehensive characteristics of FA have been published by educational authorities (ARG,1999, QCA, 2001,McManus, 2008) including sharing of learning goal, development of learning progression, active engagement of students, feedback, instructional adjustment etc.Finally, these are the general characteristics of FA for all subjects.No paper has explored the distinguishing FA features for L2 classroom.The similar story goes with study of FA principles, which are not as comprehensive as in its western counterparts and most of them are taken directly from western discourse without reference to L2 classroom in Chinese contexts.As far as the method or instrument of FA is concerned, the most thoroughly researched one is portfolio.Luo (2003) detailed the different ways to use it and Li (2008) focused on its washback.Many other scholars reported its use in their own studies (Cao, Zhang & Zhou, 2004, He, 2011).In addition to portfolio, Chinese FA literatures also cover classroom observation, self-assessment, peer assessment, interview, multimedia etc.However, almost all of these tools have been researched extensively overseas and we haven't found new instrument developed for L2 classroom in local contexts.What is worth mentioning is that while little efforts have been made to develop new FA instruments and establish their effects, there are many research on how to apply FA in network and multimedia context.Li (2005), Zhou & Qin (2005) and Wang (2006) studied how to use internet technology to help implement FA for college English education.Wang & Sun (2009) discussed how FA is facilitated by network technology in translation course.Tang & Wu (2011) reviewed the research on automated writing evaluation (AWE) and automated essay scoring (AES) both at home and abroad.Based on the review, they pointed out that introduction of educational technology was not only about technology.It was more about a systematic reform involving users' beliefs, perceptions, methods and behaviors.To sum it up, although these studies were short of innovation, they did play an important role in improving our knowledge and understanding of FA.

Construct
of FA System and WorkingModel Apart from the characteristics, principles and methods of FA, more ambitious work has been made to establish FA system and working model.Huang (2010) proposed a formative assessment system aligned for college English teaching builtunder the theoretical framework of cognitive-social learning theory of education and the guidance of task-based and cognitive approaches to language.Li (2011) suggested a FA system for English major writing that consists of peer assessment, self-assessment and portfolio.Liu, Hu &Zhang (2011) designed a FA system of College oral English for science majors.Wen (2011) developed a theoretical model for assessing a postgraduate course on reading and evaluating research papers, which consisted of three phases: setting up goals, eliciting learning evidence, and providing feedback.Yang (2012) built a contingency-centered real-time FA model for college English, which described and explained the inter-related connection between teachers' goal and students' performance, and thus presented a deeper "formative" meaning.These studies deepen our understanding of FA and reveal the applicability of FA for different courses.Limitations of these studies lie in: (1) Interaction of different components of FA system is not discussed.For example, Li (2011) only suggested the system should be made up of peer assessment, selfassessment and portfolio with little exploration into the way they work together to play the "formative" role; (2) the working models proposed fail to represent all the components of FA cycle.For example, Wen's (2011)model proposed only three stages of setting up goals,eliciting learning evidence,and providing feedback.What is missing here is interpreting step which is an integral part of all educational measurement including FA.General FA model has been deeply researched so far in international assessment field.One of the most comprehensive one is the model proposed by Heritage (2010).The model consists of 10 components: learning progressions, learning goals, criteria for success, eliciting evidence of learning, interpreting the evidence, identifying the gap, feedback, instructional modifications, scaffolding new learning and closing the gap.And it is emphasized that the relationship between these components is dynamic and interactive and thereforechanges to one component might lead to shifts in other aspects of the FA process.

Validity and Reliability of FA
As far as methods and systems of FA isconcerned, one thing must be taken into consideration in their development: validity.Validity is too important to be ignored in the study of assessment.Two key journal articles in China have discussed validity issue of FA.Li &Zeng (2008) made a comparison among Brookhart's ( 2003) "classroommetric theory", Linn, Baker and Dunbar's (1991) "performance assessment validity theory", Lynch & Shaw's (2005) "alternative assessment validity theory" and Bachman's (2002Bachman's ( & 2005) ) "argumentbased approaches".Based on the comparison, they proposed to use the framework by Bachman for validity study of FA because its superiority in terms of theoretical basis and operationability.Li (2012) proposed that consequence should be the key issue in the study of FA validity.While relevant literatures of validity are quite rich for SA, the study for FA or classroom assessment has just started, especially in China.In essence, FA is an inferential process and the basic principles of measurement theories should apply to FA too.But so far, no measurement theory of FA has been established both at home and abroad.

Teacher ProfessionalDevelopment andFA
To incorporate formative assessment into their teaching would involve teachers in not only acquisition of the necessary skills but also change of role as teachers (Black,1993).Xu&Liu (2008) explored the teachers' FA knowledge from the perspective of teacher professional development.She found that formation of teachers' knowledge of FA is influenced by such factors as their personal life and academic experience, their social relationship and their living and working site and therefore suggested that attention should be paid to teacher's personal experience and creation of favorable working environment for teachers.Xu(2011) studied teachers' identity change caused by assessment reform and found that teacher's identity was constructed under the influence of social and historical factors.

Literature Review of FA
As FA L2 research in China has been on the increase, some researchers have attempted to review the development of FA in China for clarifying the existing problems and future directions of FA (Wang &Fu, 2006;Wu, 2008;Li,2012).They have given us a bird's eye view of what FA is like in China and where it should be going.But these studies suffered from some weaknesses, thus failing to make a complete picture of existing FA and more reasonable blueprint for its future development.
(1)The reviews are based on analysis of limited materials.Wang & Fu (2006) and Wu (2008) didn't include monographs and Ph.D. papers that are, quite informative and some of them focus on aspects of FA seldom touched by journal articles as shown above.What is more, Wang & Fu (2006) analyzed only 9 articles while Wu (2008) 79 articles for situation description.To some extent, they didn't examine FA from a macro-perspective.Li (2012) did make a list of major publications of FA in China including articles and some Ph.D. dissertations and monographs in his review.But he just mentioned that these studies touched on many dimensions of FA research such as concept, theories and practice without any further deep analysis of them.(2) The problems they pointed out are too general.And as they didn't make much link between FA development in China and the latest development of FA research and practice, they failed to provide suggestions for solving existing problems by drawing on international experiences.
To summarize, it is clear that passion and motivation towards FA are still strong in L2 teaching field because of its empirically-proven and well-recognized value in improving teaching and learning.Yet FA is still in budding stage in China, facing such challenges and problems as inadequate financial support, lack of quality research into various aspects of FA, imbalanced quality research focus, limited knowledge of the latest developments of FA, the shortage of L2-related FA research, the tension between FA and SA in the dominant testing culture of China, the timeconsuming nature of FA and lack of professional FA training.

The Future Direction of FA in China-Putting FA in the Chinese Context
Based on the above-mentioned problems,it is suggested that policy-makers, researchers and practitioners should work together to enhance FA for L2 in China by taking into consideration of local contexts and drawing on international experiences.Specifically, efforts can be made in the following directions.More financialsupport for balancedqualityresearch into importantissuesof FA Generally speaking, the quality of FA research in China is quite poor.There is almost noquality research for primary and secondary L2 classroom and almost all the themes covered in Chinese FA research discourse require further research to different degrees.It is suggested more financial support be provided for research into all aspects of FA mentioned above, but priorities should be given to primary and secondary L2 education and the following issues given the local contexts.

Clarification of FA concept
Since the introduction of "formative" into classroom assessment by Bloom in 1971, the concept of FA has been enlarged from frequent tests at the end of an instructional unit of one to two weeks to encompass "all those activities undertaken by teachers, and or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged" (Black & William, 1998,pp. 7-8).There is also a popularview to regard FA as "a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust on-going teaching and learning to improve students' achievement of intended instructional outcomes" (CCSSO, 2008, pp. 1).Unfortunately, these developments of FA concept seem to have not found their presence in both institutional and classroom levels in China.
Specifically, there exists a widespread "limited understanding and superficial adoption" (Black, 2007, pp.18)in China.FA is interpreted as process assessment and implemented for summative purpose by many institutions and teachers.According to Chen (2012), FA is usually understood and practiced at institutional level as process assessment that highlights frequency and timing which are no longer regarded as the key features of FA in its modern conceptualization.What is worse, it is required by institutional administration that process assessment consists of three elements: student participation in classroom activities, assignments and attendance and records should be kept of student performance in terms of these elements so that they can be combined with final grade and used for reporting.Probably because of the institutional influence, teachers also take FA as process assessment as shown in the following interview: KU-T1: it [formative assessment] was quite little in the past.Researcher: Oh? KU-T1: [it was] 10% for the process, the rest all went to final term exam.Now it is around half to half.(Chen, 2012, p. 25) This means that the process assessment is made to serve summative purpose together with final term exam, exhibiting little quality of FA as it is now.This superficial interpretation and adoption can hinder the implementation of FA because "A misunderstood formative-assessment process is unlikely to be widely adopted because more educational leaders who are encouraging teachers to employ formative assessment will end up advocating with imprecision which they themselves do not understand (Popham, 2011, pp. 296)."One of ways to correct this situation is to formulate official definition of FA and clarification of its characteristics in national educational documents for FA promotion.In western world, there are organizations specialized in the promotion of FA like ARG in UK and FAST in USA.They have published authoritative definition of FA and illustrations of FA characteristics with typical FA examples.These practices ensure a uniform understanding of FA.In contrast, although FA has been written into three crucial national documents for English education, no space is left there for clarification of FA concept and its characteristics in NECS for BE, NECS for SHS, and CECR.In this respect we can follow the UK and USA by printing the right understanding of FA into the guiding documents.
However, we don't' have to copy UK or USA's understanding of FA for there has been a divide over what FA is.Some people regard it as tool as typically reflected by the FA item banks while some others believe it to be a process as mentioned above.However, Bennett (2011) holds that both "tool" view and "process" view are too simple and "Formative assessment then might be best conceived as neither a test nor a process, but some thoughtful integration of process and purposefully designed methodology or instrumentation (p.7)".All of these ideas are quite inspiring for better understanding of FA.FA researchers are likely to formulate better conceptualization of FA for L2 in Chinese context by drawing on both international and local experiences and write it into the official documents for better and wider spread.

Study of FA in Relation to Underlying L2 Theories
Practical implementation will depend in part on exploring the differences in formative practices between different school subjects (Hodgen& Marshall, 2005).Many FA research have been done about how FA empowers students with greater learner autonomy, helps increase achievement, andassists teachers in identifying what learners know and need to learn in the field of mathematics and science (Harlen& Winter, 2004;Rea-Dickins& Gardner, 2000;Weeden& Winter, 1999).However, FA has scarcely been researched in L2 classrooms (Rea-Dickins, 2004).Though recent years have seen a rise of FA researchin terms of quantity for L2 in China, the research quality is much to be desired.
One of the limitations lies in inadequate exploration of specific subject content in order to inform FA in the particular subject context.The existing research about L2 classroom FA in China draws too much on experiences of FA for other subjects or general purpose from conceptualization through implementation process to particular instruments and techniques.Few attempts have been made to link FA with underlying L2 subjectrelated theories.This has exerted a negative impact on development of FA for L2, which, different from math or science in nature, has its own rules for teaching and learning.For example, Math has relatively clear paths of progressions for learning and therefore it is possible to arrange for a predetermined sequence of knowledge for teaching and learning.As a result, most FA in Math is planned and structured with delayed, predetermined feedback based on student performance on SA while scaffolding FA feedback is relatively easy with math because of fairly structured patterns of thinking, skills and strategies in these subjects (McMillan, 2011).L2 learning is a different story.Recent SLA research shows that language acquisition and learning goes in a meandering way instead of a straight one, which is partly reflected in textbook developers abandoning knowledge and structure for tasks, topics and functions as principle for organizing teaching materials.All of these make L2 classroom FA more complicated and challenging and at the same time FA based on L2 learning and teaching theories a more appealing and promising endeavor.
A good cut-point for this endeavor is believed to be the study of task for FA because: (1) the concept of task in language teaching and learning is richly informed by findings in linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA.To link FA to task is to link FA to the supporting theories behind task.(2) It is required in national educational documents that the target of English education is development of comprehensive language ability, which consists of five components, namely, language skills, linguistic knowledge, affective factors, learning strategies, and cultural awareness (MOE, 2011, pp.9).L2 task can elicit more comprehensive information in terms of these five components.In contrast, summative tests are limited in number of items and are predominantly characterized by multiple-choice or short-answer formats.This will result in limited representation of the intended curriculum and absence of important processes, strategies, and knowledge that cannot be assessed within limited time and/or in typical test fashion (Shepard, 2008).(3) What is more, FA is part of instructional process and task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been researched and practiced for more than 10 years in China, it might be easier for teachers to accept task as FA instrument.
However task for FA exerts higher demand on teachers.FA is expected to elicit accurate learning evidence and how much information can be elicited about students' performance depends on the interaction between task and students.If the task is so difficult that students can say or do nothing about it, then no formative evidence can be gained.This too difficult task might be acceptable for SA because it just means no point gained for task but not valid for FA because FA should provide information about the gap between students' current ability and expected ability.In this case, teachers might need to choose another task or change the task to the effect that the task can elicit best performance of each individual student.Only in this way, can teachers identify the accurate gap between students' true level and target level.That means implementation of FA is quite challenging, requiring teachers not only to use task already made but also to analyze, modify or even develop task so that accurate information can be elicited about students' learning.
What is relieving is that we don't to have to start from the scratch.Task as assessment tool has been studied by many scholars in China.Han (2003) explained how to design tasks and how to assess task performance of the testees.Luo (2009) conducted a research on task difficulty (A focus on tasked-based language assessment: TBLA) and constructed a new framework of task difficulty.According to her research results, there is a correlation between task difficulty and student competence.In relation to TBLA is the study of task features, such as task condition, task complexity and task difficulty, how they affect language production of language learners (He & Wang, 2003, Huang, 2009).Huang (2009) examined the effect of task difficulty, task type and task condition on the spoken and written language production of language learners in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity with the assistance of Levelt's spoken language production model.He & Wang (2003) focused on the impact of task complexity, task difficulty and English proficiency on language production of language learners.All these findings can offer some inspiration for analyzing, modifying and developing tasks for FA.But they are by nature based on SA.How to transfer these findings to FA and enrich FA via task deserves more efforts.

Promotion of Student SA Performance through FA
"FA works within a larger educational context.If that context is to function effectively in educating students, its components must be coherent (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, andGlaser 2001, 255, cited in Bennett, 2011)."In case of FA, it must be coherent with SA to function well becauseoneof the barriers to wider practice of FA comes from the tension between classroom-based formative assessments of student learning, and high visibility summative tests (OECD, 2005)."Too often, highly visible summative tests used to hold schools accountable for student achievement drive what happens in classrooms (p.24)."This is particularly true of English education in China.However, we don't see a chance of eliminating the high-stake testing because of the selection function it serves.What we can do is to try to reduce its negative impact on FA.Logically, there should not be an in-born contradiction between FA and SA as they are aligned to the same standards as illustrated in NECS.What is wrong is the poor quality of high-stakes tests that focus too much on language knowledge instead of comprehensive language ability promoted by NECS.In other words, FA and SA in practice are concerned with different things.While FA is supposed to monitor the development of comprehensive language ability, SA is focused on linguistic knowledge.No wonder they contradict each other.The way to change this situation is to improve the quality of SA so that both FA and SA work towards the same standards.In this way, FA should be able to help enhance SA performance.In addition to the change of SA for alignment between FA and SA, more efforts should be invested into the study of the kind of FA practices that can best boost SA performance.In this respect, Carless (2007) has made a good starting point by introducing the pre-emptive formative assessment, "a form of instructional scaffolding worth acknowledging as within the repertoire of formative assessment techniques."(p.181).
Carless (2007) holds that timing and student engagement are key concepts in pre-emptive formative assessment designed to address the problem that much feedback occurs too late for it to be acted upon optimally.What is needed now is to "collect empirical data from schools on different forms of pre-emptive formative assessment through collaborative action research (Torrance & Pryor, 2001)" to find out (1) what are the common and effective ways of implementing pre-emptive formative assessment; (2) What challenges might crop up in pre-emptive formative assessment and how to overcome them.(3) How to develop pre-emptive formative assessment for deep learning rather than merely an exercise in exam (Carless, 2007).

Development of Ready-to-use FA
Just as we can't avoid high-stake testing that might have negative impact on FA, we can't escape from heavy workload for English teachers in China at least in near feature.FA will add much to the load for "Devotion for formative assessment is risky, taking a great deal of time and energy (Black,1993, pp.79)."As a result, measures should be taken to help teachers reduce the workload that might be brought about by FA if we want it to be accepted by those busy classroom teachers in China.Two ways are recommended here.One is to develop curriculum-embedded FA.According to Shavelson et al.(2008), there are three kinds of FA, namely on-the flyformative assessment, planned-forinteractionformativeassessment and embedded-in-thecurriculumformativeassessment.On-the-fly formative assessment arises when a "teachable moment" unexpectedly occurs; Planned-for-interaction formative assessment requires teacher to plan for and crafts ways to find the learning gap.In contrast, embedded-in-the-curriculum formative assessment comes "ready-to-use"; it is kind of formal assessment put ahead of time in the ongoing curriculum to create goal-directed "teachable moments".Different from the previous two kinds of FA, formal curriculum-embedded assessment is usually not developed by teachers themselves, but by a team of curriculum developers, assessment developers and content experts, who provide "thoughtful, curriculum-aligned, and valid ways of determining what students know, rather than leaving the burden of planning and assessing on the teacher alone" (Shavelson et al., 2008, pp.301).To materialize this suggestion, Bennett (2011) proposed to "provide formative assessment materials for the key ideas or core understandings in a domain, which should be common across curricula (p.16)" because "that would leave teachers to either apply potentially weaker, domaingeneral strategies to the remaining topics or, working through the teacher learning communities, create their own formative materials, using the provided ones as models (p.16)."To move this strategy further, textbook developer is encouraged to embed FA in teaching materials.As a matter of fact, recently developed textbooks have already made self-assessment as an integral part of each lesson or unit and included many tasks and projects that can be used as FA material.It is suggested that more efforts should be made to embed more forms of FA in textbook in a more systematic way to relieve teacher workload for implementation of FA.The other way to reduce teacher FA load is develop FA items bank like the one by ETS so that teachers can choose already-made items to conduct FA where possible instead of developing them from the scratch.All in all, though ready to use materials can be provided, the teachers need to use or adapt them.For this purpose, quality teacher professional development is required.

Strengthening Professional Development for FA
The professional development in relation to FA in Chinese discourse has discussed the policy influence on change of teacher identity and the environmental factors that support FA development.As to what constitute FA knowledge and how to help teachers develop the knowledge in a practical way, no study has been made in China.Yet many studies have been conducted on professional development internationally.Generally speaking, there appears an increasing agreement that effective professional development needs to attend to both process and content elements (Reeves, McCall, &MacGilchrist, 2001, Wilson & Berne, 1999).The content here refers to FA. Usually, FA is conceptualized as a pedagogical knowledge (Black &William, 1998) (Cohen & Hill, 2000;Ingvarson,Meiers,& Beavis, 2005).(3) Active engagement of teaches in the process is necessary for the success of professional development (Garet, Birman, Porter, Desimone, & Herman, 1999).According to Thompson and Goe (2008), several models for implementation and delivery have been piloted during the past two years.It is found that all of these models share one key component: Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs) because TLCs takes into considerations the abovementioned qualities by building a schoolbased, ongoing workshop where active, collective participation is prerequisite for participation (Wylie, Lyon, &Goe, 2009).
When it comes to educational contexts of China, both pre-service and in-service education is poor (Gong, 2011).Also, the number of short period workshop for FA is quite limited, let alone the sustained one.However, there are regular teacher training workshops offered by textbook developers for use of textbooks.Such training can be a practical good vehicle for carrying out FA professional development.Textbooks in China must be developed according to the NCES and are therefore supposed to embody updated pedagogical and domain knowledge.In addition, many textbooks are developed in such a way that FA is embedded nowadays.In some sense, textbooks abound in domain-based FA materials.Therefore, it is convenient and necessary to incorporate FA in textbookrelated teacher training.The proposal of embedding FA in training offered by textbook developer provides a good cutting-point for teacher professional development but no solution for sustainability and integration of domain, pedagogical and measurement knowledge in one program.On the one hand, thanks to its comprehensive nature, FA provides a good platform on which domain knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and measurement fundamentals can possibly co-work and cogrow.On the other hand, this comprehensive nature of FA knowledge also adds to the challenge of FA professional development.More quality research are needed to establish a professional development mechanism that encourages collective participation, considers local constraints, offers sustained efforts and incorporates domain, pedagogical and measurement knowledge.

CONCLUSION
The current synthesis analyzes the reality of FA research in China from both macro and micro perspective.The macro perspective shows there is an increasing passion for FA research but limitedfinancial support and limited number of high-quality studies, especially for primary and secondary education.The micro one reveals that FA research in China covers a wide range of important issues in FA (conceptualization, policy, implementation, characteristics, principles, methods, system and working model, validity, professional development etc.) and each of these issues needs further research.Based on the macro and micro findings, it is suggested that efforts should be made to increase financial support for balanced quality FA research; to clarify FA for administrators, researchers and teachers; to link task and the theories behind it to FA; to use FA for improving SA performance, to develop FA ready for teachersto use and finally to build professional development mechanisms suitable for Chinese contexts.It is believed that these suggestions, if put into practice, will boost the development of FA in China and the way FA develops in China will provide reference for FA development in similar contexts.

Table 1 :
Number of publications of the articles, books and Ph.D. dissertations about FA

Table 2
Types of journal articles

Table 3
The number of key foreign language journal articles according to course type

Table 3 .
In addition to the quantity, quality and target students of FA, what is worth mentioning about FA in China is that only 2% of the articles are supported by 39 funds of various levels.Of these funds, only six are purely dedicated to FA research and the other 33 funds are given to projects that take FA as one of their components.As for as the monographs and Ph.D.dissertations

Table 4
The research themes of FAliterature in China from 2001 to 2012