Филологические науки/5 Методы и приемы контроля уровня владения иностаранным языком

Sokolova I.V.

State Higher Educational Institution

“Ukrainian Academy of Banking of the National Bank of Ukraine” (Sumy)

HOW TO TEACH STUDENTS OF ECONOMICS FOR WRITTEN TESTS IN ENGLISH

Foreign languages teaching curriculum for students of Economics of the Ukrainian Academy of Banking includes written test as final assessment of students’ skills and knowledge. It covers four types of communication skills: listening, reading, language use and writing. Regularly surveys of students’ skills show that listening and writing skills are the most difficult to acquire.

The skill of listening is usually tested by having students listen to audio recordings and complete tasks to show their understanding of spoken English they hear. There are two types of tasks used to check listening skills: productive tasks and objective tasks. Examples of productive tasks include: note-taking, sentence or table completion: short answers; prompts with single words / short phrase answers; identifying mistakes and correcting factual information.

Objective tasks only require the learner to mark or circle the correct response. Examples of objective tasks are: Yes / No answers; ordering information; multiple choice; True / False answers; multiple matching.

Listening tasks are designed to assess the student’s ability to process different forms of spoken English. The learners demonstrate their understanding by responding to a variety of tasks, which are similar to those encountered in the real world and depend on an accurate understanding of what is heard.

Most listening exams consist of series of about four different and unrelated tasks. The tasks involve a mix of long and short texts, and of monologue and dialogue.

Students often experience listening tasks as difficult. It is therefore important that classroom listening practice allows them to enjoy a high level of success and build their confidence from the start. An important aspect of preparation for listening tests includes developing awareness of the tasks involved, and knowing what to expect in the exam.

The context and task are established by means of a rubric at the start of each section. The rubric normally contains clues to the content of what the student is about to listen to and instructions of what they have to do. Preparation time is allowed at the start of each section for the student to read through and make sense of the task.

Students need to learn the importance of using the time and information to get into the right frame of mind. The focus of the task may be on general understanding, specific points of information, speakers’ opinions, attitudes or feelings, or some other feature of the discourse, while the rubric provides clues to context and situation. It is a good idea to provide practice in listening to and reading task rubrics. Students can answer true/false questions, about the rubrics, highlight key words, and/or predict vocabulary they are likely to hear.

As a rule, exams test different types of listening – long and short extracts, monologues, and dialogues – as well as choosing language spoken in a range of contexts and situations. To raise the students’ awareness of this variety and the different demands it makes, it can be useful to introduce a discussion of where and when they might hear spoken English, and what makes it easier or more difficult to understand. Students should be encouraged to listen to as much spoken English as possible on the radio, television, or films.

Writing skills are considered to be the most difficult and time-consuming to acquire. In terms of 144 hours of the course it is only possible to teach students to compile a very limited number of text-types. The most appropriate text-types for the first-year students are: personal notes and messages; faxes; letters (personal and formal); Information sheets; reports.

Much more is measured in writing tests than just grammatical accuracy and the amount of vocabulary the student knows. Range and control of grammar and vocabulary are never assessed independently of communicative purpose. An answer that has some errors but achieves its communicative purpose will get a higher mark than an answer that is grammatically accurate but does not meet the task requirements.

The key skills generally measured in writing tests are listed and explained below:

1. Task achievement – in most exams the writing tasks are expressed in terms of reader and writer roles and in terms of communicative purpose.

2. Organization and cohesion – students are expected to demonstrate an understanding of how texts are structured as a whole and of paragraph structure.

3. Range and control of grammar and vocabulary – apart from avoiding errors that prevent them achieving their communicative purpose, students are expected to show that they know a range of vocabulary and a variety of grammatical structures.

The most important thing in relation to preparing students for writing tests is that the more opportunity they have to write, the better prepared they will be. Because writing is essentially a time-consuming and (usually) individual activity, teachers are sometimes uneasy about timetabling enough written practice. This is in some ways sensible, since spending half or more of a lesson with everyone working individually in silence may indeed be making less than optimal use of time that could be spent with the class interacting with one another or with the teacher. The solution is to assign most of the actual writing as homework.

Thus, listening and writing skills are the most difficult to acquire and the process of their development is time and efforts consuming. Teachers of foreign languages should devote enough time for listening and writing at practical classes to make students ready for written tests in English.