Педагогические науки

L. I. Skrypnick

English Language Assessment in Business Schools: Aspect of Transparency.

Institute for Entrepreneurship “Strategy”, Zhovty Vody

As a language proficiency measurement tool, testing affects all aspects of language education. Teaching methods and learning strategies, the overall efficiency of language learning, as well as the content of language courses are all affected by the nature and purpose of testing in the assessment system.

An important dimension in the development of language testing is the improvement of transparency -- increasing explicitness about what is being tested, how it is being tested, and how test results are used.

A transparent object is, of course, one that can be seen through. In governmental and institutional contexts, transparency implies openness and accountability; when evaluative processes and standards can be reviewed by anyone, there is less opportunity for abuse of the system and stronger belief among stakeholders in the fairness of the evaluation system. In pedagogical contexts, transparency not only enhances the face validity of a test, it allows learners to internalize the standards against which their performances are judged. A transparent test creates beneficial washback, which is when a test motivates positive teaching and learning behaviors and thereby becomes a valuable pedagogical tool, not just an evaluative weapon.

Transparency of language testing in different context -- in international, national, institutional, and pedagogical – brings many benefits.

n At the international level, shared definitions of language use and desired learning outcomes can facilitate comparability and cooperation among educational institutions in different countries.

One way in which language testers can seek to attain transparency is by adopting shared, explicit standards of language performance which provide a common basis for comparison. In a sense, test results are a currency—a currency that provides access to social capital, like education and jobs. The more places a currency is accepted, the more stable and valuable that currency is. By developing transparent testing practices, an educational system allows the marketplace to more easily understand the value of that system’s products—its graduates. If the marketplace cannot easily understand a product, it won’t value that product—or the educational system that produced it.

n At the national level, more explicit language learning standards and testing methods can improve the fairness and face validity of tests and their use in providing access to social resources.

Within a country, transparency in language testing helps promote equal access to educational resources and thereby enhances the reputation of the educational system and the government that sponsors that educational system.

Ukraine’s National Doctrine of Education Development in the 21st Century (Second National Workers Congress, 2001), adopted in 2002, recognizes education as a priority of its national policy, and in particular prioritizes the promotion of equal access to quality education. In April 2006, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine initiated a 10-year education reform program, with support from the World Bank, for the implementation of the Equal Access to Quality Education Project. A critical element of equality of access to education is fairness in testing.

n At the institutional level, explicit descriptions of desired learning outcomes can enhance articulation of levels of instruction and encourage positive wash back from assessment to instruction.

In the development of the CEFR (Council of Europe, n.d.), great care was taken to ensure that “teachers could relate to the descriptive categories selected, and that descriptors actually described the categories they were intended to describe. Finally, the best descriptors in the set were scaled using quantitative methods. The accuracy of this scaling has since been checked in replication studies”. (p. 22)

Language use and language learning are complex systems, and characterizing levels of development from several perspectives enriches the description by allowing the teacher or tester to triangulate the different perspectives in order to reach a more reliable and useful assessment of the individual learner. In addition to providing descriptors that allow a teacher or tester to identify a learner’s level of language development, the multiperspective approach of the CEFR (Council of Europe, n.d.) is also a rich resource for curriculum development.

A framework like the CEFR (Council of Europe, n.d.) is not just for test developers; it defines teaching and learning objectives and methods for course designers, textbook writers, teachers, and teacher trainers.

Tyler (1950) identified the necessary elements of curriculum design as 1) the educational purposes that the institution seeks to attain; 2) the educational experiences provided to attain these purposes; 3) the organization of these educational experiences; and 4) the evaluation of these experiences.

A framework like the CEFR offers a good deal of guidance in developing or redeveloping a foreign language curriculum by providing “a common basis for the elaboration of language syllabuses, curriculum guidelines, examinations, textbooks, etc. . . .” (Council of Europe, p. 1). Because it is relevant and accessible to all stakeholders in language education within a society, it can support both top-down and bottom-up processes of curriculum reform (e.g., Connor-Linton, 1996).

References

1. Connor-Linton, J. (1996). The Arlington curriculum development model. Foreign Language Annals, 9(2), 139–151.

2. Council of Europe. (n.d.). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR). Retrieved December 12, 2007, from: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf

3. Tyler, R. W. (1950). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Скрипнік Любов Іванівна, Обласний комунальний вищий навчальний заклад «Інститут підприємництва «Стратегія», вул. Гагаріна, 38, м. Жовті Води, Дніпропетровська обл., 52201