Anthea Wilson, Ben Beaumont: What does "can do" mean to you?
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Eaquals International Conference, Lisbon, 21 – 23 April 2016 What does ‘can do’ mean to you? Linking practicality and validity in language assessment. Anthea Wilson, Head of Test Production Ben Beaumont, TESOL Qualifications Manager Trinity College, London www.eaquals.org
Transcript of Anthea Wilson, Ben Beaumont: What does "can do" mean to you?
Eaquals International Conference, Lisbon, 21 – 23 April 2016
What does ‘can do’ mean to you? Linking practicality and validity in language assessment.
Anthea Wilson, Head of Test ProductionBen Beaumont, TESOL Qualifications ManagerTrinity College, London
www.eaquals.org
What do language exams test?
language skills?transferable skills?study strategies?
Cline 1:
A. What is desirable?
B. What is practical?
3
Speaking task based on personal
experience
Examination task to elicit target
language structures
Cline 2:
A. What is desirable?
B. What is practical?
4
Test taker competence
Communicative competence
What do students need to succeed?
Communicative Competence
Communicative Competence ModelBachman & Palmer (2010)
Discourse competence Strategic
competence
Linguistic competence
Socio-linguistic competence
What do students need to succeed?
• 1. Critical thinking and problem solving
• 2. Collaboration and leading by influence
• 3. Agility and adaptability
• 4. Initiative and entrepreneurship
• 5. Effective oral and written communication
• 6. Accessing and analysing information
• 7. Curiosity and imagination Tony Wagner, Expert In Residence, Innovation Lab of Harvard (2015)
Transferable Skills
Interaction in performance assessment of speaking skills (from McNamara, 1997, p 453)
performance
rating
candidate
taskinterlocutor
rater
scale / criteria
Cline 3:
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Test taker competence
Communicative competence
Speaking task based on personal
experience
Examination task to elicit target
language structures
Trinity College London’s exam suite
Language qualifications• Graded Exams in Spoken English (GESE)• Integrated Skills in English Exams (ISE)
Teacher education qualifications• CertTESOL• DipTESOL
References:
Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. (2010). Language assessment in practice: Developing language assessments and justifying their use in the real world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McNamara, T. (1997). ‘Interaction’ in second language performance assessment: whose performance? Applied linguistics, 18, pp. 444 – 466.
Wagner, T., & Compton, R. A. (2015). Creating innovators: The making of young people who will change the world. Simon and Schuster.
