Лингводидактическое тестирование по английскому языку в начальной школе. Учебное пособие

Р О С С И Й С К И Й ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКИЙ У Н И В Е Р С И Т Е Т им. А. И. ГЕРЦЕНА

Л. Н. Иванова, Е. А. Иванова

Лингводидактическое

тестирование по английскому языку

в начальной школе

Учебное пособие

Допущено Учебно-методическим объединением по направлениям педагогического

образования Министерства образования и науки Российской Федерации в качестве учебного пособия для студентов высших учебных заведений, обучающихся по направлению «44.04.01 Педагогическое образование»

Санкт-Петербург 2014

УДК 801 ББК 81.1 я 73

Л 43

Иванова Л. Н., Иванова Е. А.

Л 43 Лингводидактическое тестирование по английскому языку в начальной школе. — СПб.: Изд-во ООО «Книжный Дом», 2014. — 112 с.

ISBN 978-5-94777-351-4

Учебное пособие предназначено для учителей английского языка, студентов педагогических вузов, получающих подготовку по специальности «учитель английского языка», магистров, ведущих научно-исследовательскую работу по методике обучения английскому языку.

Пособие включает 10 тем, охватывающих актуальные проблемы теории и практики лингводидактического тестирования, ознакомление с которыми позволяют учителям самостоятельно разрабатывать преподавательские тесты для конкретных условий обучения при использовании различных УМК и тем самым целенаправленно готовить учащихся к итоговой аттестации за курс начальной школы.

Предлагаемая в пособии методика овладения приемами лингводидактического тестирования доказала свою эффективность при подготовке магистров в области преподавания иностранных языков в РГПУ им. А. И. Герцена.

Книга окажет помощь в учебной, научной и педагогической работе.

MEТОДИЧЕСКАЯ ЗАПИСКА

Целью данного учебного пособия является совершенствование профессиональной компетентности учителя английского языка, которая позволила бы ему решать задачи, поставленные новыми Федеральными государственными образовательными стандартами. Решение указанных задач возможно только на основе глубокого осмысления содержания итоговой аттестации за курс начальной школы и соответствующей ориентации курса обучения иностранному языку в данных условиях обучения.

Пособие базируется на идее тесной взаимосвязи и взаимовлияния обучения и контроля. Эта идея может быть реализована соответствующим выстраиванием курса обучения путем включения в него заданий с элементами тестирования, подобных тем, которые будут предложены учащимся на итоговой аттестации. В связи с этим возникает вопрос о качестве тестовых заданий.

Многие авторы, занимающиеся теорией и практикой тестирования, отмечают особую ценность так называемых «преподавательских» тестов. В качестве аргумента приводится тот факт, что они четко ориентированы на конкретную программу обучения и аудиторию, что обеспечивает их валидность.

Данное пособие поможет учителям овладеть определенными теоретическими знаниями и практическими навыками для разработки школьных тестов, что нашло отражение в его структуре и содержании.

Пособие включает 10 тем, посвященных актуальным проблемам тестологии. Предлагаемый методический аппарат включает:

•• текст для чтения, основанный на известной технике тестирования «логическая перегруппировка речевых единиц» (‘unscrambling’);

•• ключи для самоконтроля;

•• задание на обобщение полученной информации;

•• вопросы по прочитанному тексту, позволяющие организовать дискуссию по важным проблемам тестирования;

•• коммуникативные задания, направленные на актуализацию полученных знаний путем разработки тестовых заданий.

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В пособии используются материалы работ известных зарубежных методистов, работающих в области лингводидактического тестирования, таких как Д. Харрис, Дж. Хитон, А. Хьюз и др.

Книга адресована студентам, которые обучаются в магистратуре и выполняют научно-исследовательскую работу по методике обучения иностранным языкам. Практическая направленность работы окажет помощь творческим педагогам в подготовке учащихся начальной школы к итоговой аттестации по английскому языку за курс начальной школы.

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Unit 1 TEACHING AND TESTING

Task 1: Reading the Gapped Text

The text you are going to read lacks some supporting information, e.g. argumentation, examples, references, etc. It can be found in the quotations from English language methodology readings collected the resource file that follows the text. Choose the information required and fill the appropriate letter in the table.

It is often the case that language teachers harbor a deep mistrust of tests and of testers. And it must be admitted that this mistrust is frequently well-founded. It cannot be denied that a great a great deal of language testing is of very poor quality. Too often language tests have a harmful effect on teaching and learning, and fail to measure accurately whatever it is they are intended to measure.

The effect of testing on teaching and learning is known as backwash, and can be harmful or beneficial. If a test is regarded as important, if the stakes are high, preparation for it can come to dominate all teaching and learning activities. And if the test content and testing techniques are at variance with the objectives of the course, there is likely to be harmful backwash. An instance of this would be where students are following an English course that is meant to train them in the language skills (including writing) necessary for university study in an English-speaking country, but where the language test that they have to take in order to be admitted to a university does not test those skills directly. If the skill of writing, for example, is tested only by multiple choice items, there is a great pressure to practice such items rather than practice the skill of writing itself. This is clearly undesirable.

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The proper relationship between teaching and testing is that of partnership. It is true there may be occasions when the teaching programme is potentially good and appropriate but the testing is not; we are then likely to suffer from harmful backwash. But equally there may be occasions when teaching is poor or inappropriate and when testing is able to exert a beneficial influence. We cannot expect testing only to follow teaching. Rather we should demand of it that it is supportive of good teaching and, where necessary, exerts a corrective influence on bad teaching. If testing always had a beneficial backwash on teaching, it would have a much better reputation among teachers.

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The second reason for mistrusting tests is that very often they fail to measure accurately whatever it is that they are intended to measure. Teachers know this. Students’ true abilities are not always reflected in the test scores that they obtain. To a certain extent this is inevitable. Language abilities are not easy to measure. We cannot expect a level of accuracy comparable to those of measurements in the physical sciences. But we can expect greater accuracy than is frequently achieved.

Why are tests inaccurate? There are two main sources of inaccuracy. The first of these concerns test content and test techniques. If we want to know how well someone can write, there is absolutely no way we can get a really accurate measure of their ability by means of a multiple choice test. Professional testers have expended great effort, and not little money, in attempts to do it, but they have always failed. We may be able to get an approximate measure, but that is all. While few teachers would wish to follow that particular example in order to test writing ability, the overwhelming practice in large-scale testing of using multiple choice items does lead to imitation in circumstances where such items are not at all appropriate. What is more, the imitation tends to be of a very poor standard. Good multiple choice items are notoriously difficult to write. A great deal of time and effort has to go into their construction. Too many multiple choice tests are written where the necessary care and attention are not given.

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The second origin of unreliability is to be found in the scoring of the test. Scoring can be unreliable in that equivalent test performances are accorded significantly different scores. For example, the same composition may be given very different scores by different markers (or even by the same marker on different occasions).

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So far we discussed why tests are mistrusted by many language teachers, and how this mistrust is often justified. One conclusion drawn from this might be that we would be better off without language tests. Teaching is, after all, the primary activity; if testing comes in conflict with it, then it is testing that should go, especially when it has been admitted that so much testing provides inaccurate information.

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But testing is not the only way in which information about people’s language ability can be gathered. It is just one form of assessment, and other methods will often be more appropriate. It is helpful here to make clear the difference between formative and summative assessment. Assessment is formative when teachers use it to check on the progress of their students, to see how far they have mastered what they should have learned, and often use this information to modify their future teaching plans. Such assessment can also be the basis for feedback to the students. Informal tests or quizzes may have a part to play in formative assessment but so will simple observation (of performance on learning tasks, for example) and the study of portfolios that students have made of their work. Students themselves may be encouraged to carry out self-assessment in order to monitor their progress, and then modify their own learning objectives.

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The teaching profession can make three contributions to the improvement of testing: they can write better tests themselves; they can enlighten other people who are involved in testing processes; and they can put pressure on professional testers and examining boards to improve their tests.

In any consideration of educational testing, a distinction must be drawn between the rather informal, teacher-made tests of the classroom and those formal, large scale, “standardized” instruments which are prepared by professional testing services to assist institutions in the selection, placement, and evaluation of students.

Classroom tests are generally prepared, administered, and scored by one teacher. In this situation, test objectives can be based directly on course objectives, and test content derived from specific course content. Inasmuch as instructor, test writer, and evaluator are all the same individual, the students know pretty much what is expected of them – what is likely to be covered by the test questions and what kind of standards are likely to be applied in scoring and interpretation of the results. And since the scoring will be done by only one person, the standards should remain reasonably consistent from paper to paper and test to test. Moreover, it is very likely that the teacher’s ultimate evaluation of his students will be based on a number of tests and other measures, not just one. Therefore a single bad test performance by a student need not cause irreparable damage to his final standing, nor, probably, will one inadequate ineptly constructed test prevent the teacher from making a reasonably sound final judgment. Finally, since the number of students to be tested is relatively small, the teacher is not limited to quickly scorable item types but may, if he wishes, make full use of compositions and short-answer techniques.

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Resource File

A  One last thing to be said about backwash is that it can be viewed as part of something more general – the impact of assessment. The term ‘impact’ as it is used in educational measurements, is not limited to the effects of measurement on learning and teaching but extends to the way in which assessment affects society as a whole.

B  Fortunately, there are ways of minimizing such differences in scoring. Most (but not all) large testing organizations, to their credit, take every precaution to make their tests, and the scoring of them, as reliable as possible, are generally highly successful in this respect. Small-scale testing, on the other hand, tends to be less reliable than it should be. So it is very important to know how to achieve greater reliability in testing.

C  We have just looked at a case of harmful backwash. However, backwash can be positively beneficial. The following example proves it. An English language test was to administered at the end of an intensive year of English study at university and would be used to determine which students would be allowed to go on to their undergraduate courses (taught in English). A test was devised which was based directly on the analysis of the English language needs of the first year undergraduate students, and which included tasks as similar as possible to those which they would have to perform as undergraduates (reading textbook materials, taking notes during lectures, and so on).

The introduction of this test, in place of one which had been entirely multiple choice, had an immediate effect on teaching: the syllabus was redesigned, new books were chosen, classes were conducted differently. The result of these changes was that by the end of their year’s training in circumstances made particularly difficult by greatly increased numbers and limited resources, the students reached a much higher standard in English than had ever been achieved in the university’s history. This was a case of beneficial backwash.

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