Testing English

[Admin]

The 2 points presented earlier in this unit (repeated below) represent, for me, the essence of what learning English means.

● "The systems of grammatical rules that actually guide individuals’ language use are constructed by their users on the basis of their exposure to, and participation in, meaningful communicative events around them. This is true for both L1 and L2 English."

● "Descriptions of grammatical rules that are deliberately taught and learned in an educational context are a kind of partial ‘knowledge about’ language systems, but having this knowledge doesn’t mean learners have the systems themselves to guide their usage."

I think this is the million dollar question: if you teach in a plurilithic way, how can you test in the same way? If for 20 students there are 20 different Englishes and they have constructed their own mental grammar and lexicon, testing the textbook English is a fallacy.
Personally, I would challenge the "fill in the blank" and the multiple choice testing, to begin with. If we NEED to test, then perhaps allow learners to be a bit creative and have some free reign over their tests and exams and have them create personal and fun presentations, or blogs, or stories, or bring in pictures to talk about, rather then giving them pre-set sentences with blanks about random things and people that don't mean anything to them and that have to rigidly follow the rules in declarative memory. Focus of them successfully completing the task, instead of how accurately it was completed...We always say that activities should be communicative and meaningful for the learner, but then the testing is the opposite. It's a tough one!

[sameerco1971]

In my opinion, it is not fair to test the students, despite their different Englishes, on the textbook only. The test should include open ended questions to enable each student show his/her unique skills and the teacher should bear in mind the diversity and the plurilithic views of English. The students can show their creativity in writing rather than multiple choice. One unfair example is multiple choice question in grammar where the student has to choose the answer that is mentioned in the textbook. In fact the rule in the text book is not complete and the students will not be able to study every single detail related to this rule. In fact, the curriculum designer wants the student to believe in the grammar rule that is presented in the textbook in a very simple and incomplete form.

[Kunlong Jin]

Tests or exams only based on textbooks is not a reliable and valid way to understand the students' whole language attainment. That is why I always use real-life situations. In a typical English class today, students come from various backgrounds, so it is almost impossible to test learners simply by the textbook knowledge. Bringing in real-life situations to my lessons makes perfect sense, as it allows my students to engage with the target language in a way they can relate to. Real-life contexts are also really useful to give students a functional grasp of English, in that they’ll learn vocabulary and grammar constructs that they can start using outside of the classroom as soon as they leave. The tests can also be based on real-life challenging questions.

[andrea scabbia]

May 22, 2020 14:26:01 GMT Kunlong Jin said:

Tests or exams only based on textbooks is not a reliable and valid way to understand the students' whole language attainment. That is why I always use real-life situations. In a typical English class today, students come from various backgrounds, so it is almost impossible to test learners simply by the textbook knowledge. Bringing in real-life situations to my lessons makes perfect sense, as it allows my students to engage with the target language in a way they can relate to. Real-life contexts are also really useful to give students a functional grasp of English, in that they’ll learn vocabulary and grammar constructs that they can start using outside of the classroom as soon as they leave. The tests can also be based on real-life challenging questions.

I agree with you. The class book is only one of the tools, not THE ONLY tool.

[marian]

I think continuous assessment comes in handy in this case. You evaluate your students along the course while they're doing all kinds of activities, from presentations to role-playing.

[evarojo]

It is a very difficult question, it is contradictory that, in our classroom and the world, there are many and infinite Englishes and there is only a way of testing. Many textbooks offer their own tests and it is very easy to fall for them, no preparation time from us, but it would not be fair to students. Testing is hard as well, it is hard to include all the elements of their learning: projects, homework, presentations, written compositions, etc. I try to go beyond the exams we have to fulfil in secondary schools in Spain, but for many teachers is just that, the exams the students complete per term.

[Amaryllis]

Jul 3, 2020 18:29:00 GMT marian said:

I think continuous assessment comes in handy in this case. You evaluate your students along the course while they're doing all kinds of activities, from presentations to role-playing.

I agree. I once taught an ESP course for flight attendants. All course materials were created by the language school to train the students in all aspects of their job. Students were assessed periodically on presentations, participation in discussions and role plays; the final assessment consisted of 2 role plays. The assessment was a perfect fit based on what they had learnt on the course and what they needed to use English for in their job.

[Ulla]

I think this is a very tricky question for teachers who have to prepare students for standardised exams where the teacher has no influence on the way the learners are assessed. Even if you believe it is unfair, you still want your students to pass the exam.

Depending on the context, I think the best approach is to foster communicative competence, help learners see themselves as users of English and be open to a plurilithic view of English. Test preparation should only be a small part of what you do in the classroom, and if the learners are well grounded, you can teach them test taking strategies in a few lessons and they will be aware that this is a skill that is separate from their general proficiency.

[tony]

The comments above were a bit of an eye-opener for me: I could not agree more that while teachers try to concentrate on placing fluency above accuracy for the sake of meaningful communication, language proficiency tests essentially are opposed to such an approach, and test accuracy, at times, in situations that are of no particular use for some learners, i.e. it is fair to say that some of those exam tasks can be divorced from reality, at least in terms of knowledge applicability for a particular learner. My point is what those tests test may not be of particular value for an individual learner, and may appear not to coincide with his/her goals. The bottom line is whenever learners are given a task to use English as a tool to prepare a presentation or a report on a specific topic, their language skills are challenged, they have more scope to give full play to their productive vocabulary and use of language; thus, such tasks are of higher value as compared to in-a-way-stilted cloze tests.

[miabae]

This makes testing and grading impossible, and the latter is what a lot of students are actually interested in. They often reflect how long it took them to go up a level (e.g. Pre-Intermediate to Intermediate), and scoring/grading gives them a sense of achievement. 

[Rachel Dry]

Jul 27, 2020 10:30:16 GMT Ulla said:

I think this is a very tricky question for teachers who have to prepare students for standardised exams where the teacher has no influence on the way the learners are assessed. Even if you believe it is unfair, you still want your students to pass the exam.

Depending on the context, I think the best approach is to foster communicative competence, help learners see themselves as users of English and be open to a plurilithic view of English. Test preparation should only be a small part of what you do in the classroom, and if the learners are well grounded, you can teach them test taking strategies in a few lessons and they will be aware that this is a skill that is separate from their general proficiency.

I agree with this, unfortunately on a professional level, despite my views on testing etc at the end of the day we still have to get our students to pass exams if that is the reason they are taking the English course. Teaching exam taking skills and tricks to pass exams is necessary and those skills can be useful for their future uses of English... for example in further study or higher education. 

However, I feel i do not need to focus so much on a specific grammar point that students should have been using in a specific activity for example. Although they may not have used the specific form, they have developed and practised so many other things in that activity that it is not the end of the world if they have not explicitly shown their ability to use it.