Creative translanguaging in formative assessment : Chinese teachers’ perceptions and practices in the primary EFL classroom

Peer reviewe

An Exploratory Study of EFL Learners’ Use of ChatGPT for Language Learning Tasks: Experience and Perceptions

ChatGPT, a general-purpose intelligent chatbot developed by OpenAI, has introduced numerous opportunities and challenges in the field of language education. With its remarkable ability to generate diverse forms of text, answer questions, and provide translations within minutes, ChatGPT has become an influential tool in the era of advanced AI technology. However, to what extent ChatGPT can be used to assist students in completing language learning tasks remains largely unexplored. Against this background, this study aimed to investigate students’ experiences with ChatGPT and their perceptions of its role in language learning through a small-scale qualitative study. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with five students at a top-tier international university in China. Students’ responses revealed that ChatGPT has the potential to serve as a valuable learning partner and aid students in completing language-related tasks. Furthermore, participants exhibited critical judgment in evaluating the quality of ideas and outputs generated by ChatGPT, as well as the ability to modify prompts to maximize learning benefits. Such critical judgment offsets the potential threats to academic integrity posed by ChatGPT. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the potential of ChatGPT in language education by adding empirical evidence from students’ perspectives. This study supports the idea that ChatGPT can work as an effective tool for providing students with immediate feedback and personalized learning experiences. Such findings generate implications for future pedagogical practices in the new era by providing students with personalized guidance, designing technology-embedded language support, and developing students’ lifelong learning skills (e.g., autonomy and evaluative judgment) with the support of ChatGPT

Washback of national matriculation English test on students' learning in the Chinese secondary school context

Tests play a powerful role in the Chinese educational system, and exert significant washback on students‘ learning. This study investigates the washback effect of the high-stakes National Matriculation English Test (NMET) within a Chinese high school from the students‘ perspective. It considers, in particular, the washback effect on the process and product of learning from the standpoint of reading strategies and skills. By considering data collected from two questionnaires, a reading test and a series of semi-structured interviews, the study shows that although the development of learning strategies and reading skills is overshadowed by the high-stakes nature of the test, students show an ability to use metacognitive, compensation and affective language 104 learning strategies, and attainment in reading skills, by coping well with the modified authentic texts used as the basis for the test paper administered by the researchers. The current study also offers some thoughts on issues behind the strong washback that emerges in the study, and makes suggestions in regards to bringing more formative types of assessment into the classroom

Understanding students' responses to classroom English assessment in the Chinese high school context

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the roles that assessment plays in promoting learning. Formative assessment is considered to be a powerful device for improving students’ learning. However, its learning potential has been less extensively explored in contexts where summative assessment dominates, as summative assessment is considered to undermine the effective implementation of formative assessment. Abandoning summative assessment completely in real classrooms is not possible; therefore, how to implement formative assessment along with summative assessment becomes important. This study explores students’ responses to classroom English assessment in the Chinese high school context, a context typically dominated by summative assessment, in an attempt to identify features of formative assessment, and to examine whether and to what extent summative assessment can be used formatively. The study chooses to explore classroom assessment mainly from the perspectives of students, as they are a critical factor in the learning process. A qualitative approach was adopted to investigate this topic in five classes from two high schools in China. Participants were six teachers teaching five different classes and their forty-eight secondary students (aged 16-18). Data were collected from multiple sources, including classroom observations, the draw-a-picture technique and interviews. The study identified various assessments in classrooms, from informal ones integrated into the classroom teaching to formal tests. This thesis focuses on the three most prominent assessments in the two schools: oral presentations, dictation, and tests and related test follow-up. The in-depth exploration of these three methods reveals students’ affective responses to assessment and their understandings of the relationship between assessment and learning. Assessment was found to be an emotionally charged issue, and students responded to it with both negative and positive feelings. The complex roles of assessment have also been unraveled. At the informal end, students did not distinguish clearly between assessment and learning activities. At the formal end, tests were considered to be a tool to summarize students’ language learning achievement; and there was also the potential to use summative tests formatively, in particular through test follow-up. On the basis of the findings presented in the thesis, this study identifies three key related issues which form the framework of this research, namely, assessment tasks, feedback or judgment, and potential follow-up actions. This framework presents the assessment process and how assessment could be used to improve student learning. Central to this framework is students’ active engagement with assessment. The significance of this study is threefold. First, it contributes to the theoretical understanding of formative assessment, including the potential variations of classroom assessment and the potential interplay between formative and summative assessment. Second, it provides insights into students’ responses to assessment, including their affective responses, what they perceive assessments are, how and to what extent assessments contribute to their learning and factors affecting their perceptions. Finally, situated in a context dominated by high-stakes tests, this study uses empirical evidence to develop a contextual perspective of formative assessment; hence, the findings enrich our knowledge about implementing formative assessment in a context dominated by summative assessment.published_or_final_versionEducationDoctoralDoctor of Philosoph

A pair-conformation-dependent scoring function for evaluating 3D RNA-protein complex structures.

Computational prediction of RNA-protein complex 3D structures includes two basic steps: one is sampling possible structures and another is scoring the sampled structures to pick out the correct one. At present, constructing accurate scoring functions is still not well solved and the performances of the scoring functions usually depend on used benchmarks. Here we propose a pair-conformation-dependent scoring function, 3dRPC-Score, for 3D RNA-protein complex structure prediction by considering the nucleotide-residue pairs having the same energy if their conformations are similar, instead of the distance-only dependence of the most existing scoring functions. Benchmarking shows that 3dRPC-Score has a consistent performance in three test sets

Success rates of three scoring functions on the benchmark constructed by Huang and Zou [28] using ZDOCK[30].

<p>Success rates of three scoring functions on the benchmark constructed by Huang and Zou [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0174662#pone.0174662.ref028" target="_blank">28</a>] using ZDOCK[<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0174662#pone.0174662.ref030" target="_blank">30</a>].</p

ASPDock: protein-protein docking algorithm using atomic solvation parameters model

Abstract Background Atomic Solvation Parameters (ASP) model has been proven to be a very successful method of calculating the binding free energy of protein complexes. This suggests that incorporating it into docking algorithms should improve the accuracy of prediction. In this paper we propose an FFT-based algorithm to calculate ASP scores of protein complexes and develop an ASP-based protein-protein docking method (ASPDock). Results The ASPDock is first tested on the 21 complexes whose binding free energies have been determined experimentally. The results show that the calculated ASP scores have stronger correlation (r ≈ 0.69) with the binding free energies than the pure shape complementarity scores (r ≈ 0.48). The ASPDock is further tested on a large dataset, the benchmark 3.0, which contain 124 complexes and also shows better performance than pure shape complementarity method in docking prediction. Comparisons with other state-of-the-art docking algorithms showed that ASP score indeed gives higher success rate than the pure shape complementarity score of FTDock but lower success rate than Zdock3.0. We also developed a softly restricting method to add the information of predicted binding sites into our docking algorithm. The ASP-based docking method performed well in CAPRI rounds 18 and 19. Conclusions ASP may be more accurate and physical than the pure shape complementarity in describing the feature of protein docking.</p

Success rates of three scoring functions on the benchmark provided by Perez Cano et al [29]and created using RPDOCK[15].

<p>Success rates of three scoring functions on the benchmark provided by Perez Cano et al [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0174662#pone.0174662.ref029" target="_blank">29</a>]and created using RPDOCK[<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0174662#pone.0174662.ref015" target="_blank">15</a>].</p