Секция: «Филологические науки».

Подсекция 5: «Методы и приемы контроля

уровня владения иностранным языком».

Nina Rud, Julia Zharoid,

National Aviation University,

Kyiv, Ukraine

Assesment, Testing and Evaluation .

One of the jobs we are always asked to do as teachers is to assess our students. In other words, we are required to say how good - or bad - they are. So any teacher can benefit from a book on testing.

If you are interested in finding out something about testing and applying it to your classes, then this is the article for you. If you are interested in improving testing techniques you already use and initiating new ways of testing, then it is for you. '

Testing has, traditionally, measured the results of student performance.

We choose some representative samples of language.

We measure whether a student can use these samples.

We then try to quantify this by turning it into a mark or grade.

We keep a record of these marks and use this to give an end assessment.

Over time, all testing theory (whether languages or shampoo development) has traditionally been based on a semi-scientific procedure, namely:

1 Measure the performance.

2 Do something to affect the performance.

3 Measure the performance again and compare the difference.

Applying this traditional testing procedure or model to language learners has meant that the language learner is treated as a kind of plant. We measure the plant, apply the new fertiliser, and then measure the plant again to see what effect the fertiliser has had. As language teachers, we apply a placement test, teach, and then give an achievement test to see how much better the students are.

In other words, testing is generally concerned with enumeration, that is, turning performance into numbers.

There are many groups who have an interest in assessing a student's abilities: teachers, heads of departments, parents, governments and, of course, the students themselves. However, we all share the same four main reasons for assessment:

1. to compare students with each other

2. to see if students meet a particular standard

3. to help the student's learning

4. to check if the teaching programme is doing its job.

Every time we ask students to answer a question to which we already know the answer, we are giving them a kind of test. Much of what we do in class is, in fact, testing students' knowledge. Here are some examples.

He studies English at the University.

They …?

Find a word in the text that means “intelligent”.

On the tape, where does Helen tell Tom she wants to visit her relatives?

What is the main idea of paragraph 4?

Dictation: Write down the following…

So that part of our lesson finished.

What do you think we are going to do next?

Language teachers are sometimes asked to say what is the best test or the best technique. Such questions reveal a misunderstanding of what is involved in the practice of language testing. In fact there is no best test or best technique. The assumption that has to be made therefore is that each testing situation is unique and so sets a particular testing problem. It is the tester's job to provide the best solution to that problem.

The same is true of all evaluation: there is no right answer. There is only a problem, and the answer to that problem will almost certainly be different in your university with your staff and your students than in another university.

^:We will try to explain the concepts and give you some ideas. But, inevitably, you may view many our ideas as idealistic, describing a 'perfect scenario'. It is up to you to use what you can, adapt what you can and omit what you know you can't do in your situation. Like all probtems that affect lots of people, any solution will be result of talking, arguing and final agreement. This might take some time to do, but we owe this to the students. Our assessments may affect their lives for years to come.

Sometimes, though, teachers can get confused about whether they are teaching or testing. We can think we are teaching when we are actually testing. This is particularly true when we try to teach the four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Here language teachers face a major problem. We don't really know enough; that is, there are no clear rules about good listening, reading and other skills. All we have are some rather generalised ideas such as skimming and scanning, and these are not detailed enough to help us work out an effective and progressive teaching programme.

In other words, when faced with a skill that is difficult to teach, such as good listening, we normally answer this problem in one of two ways. Either we give the students lots of opportunities to show what they know so we can see if they're improving. We ask them to read, write or listen to texts of increasing linguistic complexity and hope they keep the same general results or even improve; or we keep the same texts and increase the complexity of the questions. This is a bit like a doctor saying: “ I don’t know what caused your illness or why you’re getting better, but your temperature is going down”. All we can do to teach the four skills is expose students to language and take their temperature via testing to see if they're getting better.

Our task is to compare students will each other.If your students want to enter a university to study a popular subject, the university has to select which students it takes.

We have thought much about how we can put ideas about testing into practice. In order to assess learners and learning, we need some data about the student.

-Can he/she use the components of language - grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation?

- Can he/she use the language itself - in reading, writing, listening and speaking?

-How does he/she learn most effectively and can that become part of testing?

Should we test the student only at the end of the term or more often? If we are interested in the student's development, we need to assess the student over a period of time.

At some point, often the end of a course, we have to put a label on the student: what are his/her strong or weak points? In the past, both teacher and student would step back and let a test decide. We both surrendered responsibility.

This is impossible if you take on the role of assessor alone. But there are 31 people who can help each student: the teacher, the student, and all the student's peers. It is possible to evaluate large classes, but only if we re-examine responsibilities. If we do everything for the students, why should they bother to do it for themselves? In the case of compositions, we may spend 30 minutes marking work that the student wrote in ten. And every mistake that we find is something the student didn't find, or didn't bother to find.

It is time that we, as teachers, called on the students to share the responsibility for their assessment: however hard we try, we can't learn it for them. Sharing responsibilities means that both we and the students have to change. Change is a very threatening thing. It means we have to learn new skills, and we all worry that we won't be as good as we used to be.

Who sets the test's standards/criteria?

How are the results used? To compare students? To assess the teaching programme? For other reasons?

There are, as we shall see in many ways of assessing students. But probably the most common method of assessment is a test.We can use the following tests:

- proficiency tests examine a general standard in ability, regardless of the teaching programme.

- achievement tests examine whether students can do what they have been taught.

- placement tests are a mixture of the above two, depending on what criteria we use to place the student.

- diagnostic tests use proficiency or achievement tests to analyse strengths and weaknesses in the student or the teaching programme itself.