Regulatory references қР 27 шілде 2007 ж. «Білім туралы»
THE FOLLOWING IS THE DESCRIPTION OF THE MAIN PARTS OF THE TESTING PROCESS REMOTE SERVERS
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| 2. THE FOLLOWING IS THE DESCRIPTION OF THE MAIN PARTS OF THE TESTING PROCESS REMOTE SERVERS
2.I Control in teaching a foreign language The objective of this document is to define the strategy that will be used to test the Melodic platform, which includes: • detailing the activities required for preparing and conducting the various levels of testing; • communicating to all parties the tasks that they need to perform and the schedule to be followed in performing these tasks; • documenting the test products and reports; • explaining the levels of testing that will be followed during the entire project life cycle; • defining the roles and responsibilities of all participants involved in the testing process in the Melodic project • outlining at a high level the issue tracking procedures; and outlining at a high level how changes in the scope of the project (requirements, non-functional requirements and technical assumptions) and in the code base/documentation will be managed. Specific test objectives apply for particular types of testing that will be supported in the project, such as Unit and Smoke testing. Such objectives will be addressed in the respective test plans for these testing types. The project coordinator, or persons designated by the project coordinator, will be responsible for the final acceptance of the results of the tests Control is the determination of the level of language proficiency achieved by students during a certain period of study. The control is also a part of the lesson, during which the teacher evaluates how the students have learned the material and can use it for practical purposes. The control allows you to: 1) the teacher to get information: a) about the results of the work of the group of students as a whole and each student individually; b) about the results of their work (to find out how effective the teaching methods are, to determine the failures in the work, which allows you to make changes to the training program); 2) students: a) increase motivation in learning, as control indicates success or failure in work; b) study more diligently, make adjustments to their educational activities. The objects of control in the classroom are: a) knowledge and skills formed on their basis (language competence); b) the ability to use the acquired knowledge and skills in various communication situations (communicative competence); c) knowledge of the country of the language being studied and the national characteristics of the speech behavior of its speakers (socio-cultural competence). The promotion of communicative competence as the main practical goal of teaching a foreign language contributed to the definition of speech skills as the main final object of control, and the possession of language material should be considered primarily as an object of current control. At the same time, in the process of controlling the level of language proficiency, you should focus not on the absolute, but on the relative correctness of speech, i.e. the achieved level of communicative competence should be evaluated not depending on the number of language errors, but depending on the success of solving the set communicative task. At the same time, the achieved level of language proficiency will be indicated by: a) the ability to adequately express thoughts in a given speech situation; b) the relative correctness of using the means of languages when constructing an utterance. As a planned result of teaching a foreign language in secondary school at the basic level (grades 5-9) elementary communicative competence in listening, speaking, writing, and advanced communicative competence in reading are the most effective. The control in the classroom should reflect the specifics of a foreign language as an academic subject. The acquisition of a foreign language, which is classified as a group of practical disciplines, primarily involves mastering the ways of using the language in various types of speech activity and areas of communication. Therefore, the main object of control in language classes is speech skills. The control of the skills of performing actions and operations with language material in communicative training should be aimed not so much at testing the knowledge of lexical units and the ability to form grammatical forms with their help, but rather at the ability to perform actions with them when forming their thoughts and understanding the thoughts of other people who speak a foreign language. In the light of the above, it is proposed to evaluate the success of students separately for mastering the language material and for the formation of speech skills. Hicks (2000:155) considers that the role of tests is very useful and important, especially in language learning. It is a means to show both the students and the teacher how much the learners have learnt during a course. The author of the paper agrees with the statement, for she believes that in order to see whether the students have acquired the material and are making constant progress, the teacher will inevitably have to test his/her learners. It does not mean that a usual test format with a set of activities will be used all the time. To check the students’ knowledge the teacher can apply a great range of assessment techniques, including even the self-evaluation technique that is so beloved and favoured by the students. Moreover, according to Heaton (1990:6), tests could be used to display the strength and weaknesses of the teaching process and help the teacher improve it. They can demonstrate what should be paid more attention to, should be worked on and practised. Furthermore, the tests results will display the students their weak points, and if carefully guided by the teacher, the students will be even able to take any remedial actions. Thompson (Forum, 2001) believes that students learn more when they have tests. Here we can both agree and disagree. Certainly, preparing for a test, the student has to study the material that is supposed to be tested, but often it does not mean that such type of learning will obligatory lead to acquisition and full understanding of it. On the opposite, it could often lead to the pure cramming. That, consequently, will result in a stressful situation the student will find her/himself before or during the test, and the final outcome will be a complete deletion of the studied material. We can base that previous statement on our own experience: when working at school, the author of the present research had encountered such examples for many times. However, very often the tests can facilitate the students’ acquisition process, i.e.: the students are to be checked the knowledge of the irregular verbs forms. Being constantly tested by means of a small test, they can learn them successfully and transfer them to their long-term memory, as well. Although, according to Thompson tests decrease practice and instruction time. What he means is that the students are as if limited; they are exposed to practice of a new material, however, very often the time implied for it is strictly recommended and observed by a syllabus. That denotes that there will be certain requirements when to use a test. Thus, the students find themselves in definite frames that the teacher will employ. Nevertheless, there could be advantages that tests can offer: they increase learning, for the students are supposed to study harder during the preparation time before a test. Thompson (ibid.) quotes Eggan, who emphasises the idea that the learners study hard for the classes they are tested thoroughly. Further, he cites Hilles, who considers that the students want and expect to be tested. Nonetheless, this statement has been rather generalized. Speaking about the students at school, we can declare that there is hardly a student who will truly enjoy tests and their procedure. Usually, what we will see just sore faces when a test is being mentioned. According to Thompson, the above-mentioned idea could be applied to the students who want to pass their final exams or to get a certificate in Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or First Certificate (FCE). Mostly this concerns adults or the students who have their own special needs, such as going abroad to study or work. This again supports the idea that motivation factor plays a significant role in the learning process. Moreover, too much of testing could be disastrous. It can entirely change the students’ attitude towards learning the language, especially if the results are usually dissatisfying and decrease their motivation towards learning and the subject in general. Furthermore, as Alderson (1996:212) assumes, we should not forget that the tests when administered receive less support from the teacher as it is usually during the exercises in a usual language classroom. The students have to cope themselves; they cannot rely on the help of the teacher if they are in doubt. During a usual procedure when doing various activities the students know they can encounter the teacher’s help if they require it. They know the teacher is always near and ready to assist, therefore, no one is afraid to make a mistake and try to take a chance to do the exercises. However, when writing a test and being left alone to deal with the test activities, the students panic and forget everything they knew before. The author of the paper believes that first what the teacher should do is to teach the students to overcome their fear of tests and secondly, help them acquire the ability to work independently believing in their own knowledge. That ability according to Alderson is the main point, “the core meaning” of the test. The students should be given confidence. Here we can refer to Heaton (1990:7) who conceives, supported by Hicks, that students’ encouragement is a vital element in language learning. Another question that may emerge here is how to reach the goal described above, how to encourage the students. Thus, at this point we can speak about positive results. In fact, our success motivates us to study further, encourages us to proceed even if it is rather difficult and we are about to lose confidence in ourselves. Therefore, we can speak about the tests as a tool to increase motivation. However, having failed for considerable number of times, the student would definitely oppose the previous statement. Hence, we can speak about assessment and evaluation as means for increasing the students’ motivation. Concerning Hicks (2000:162), we often perceive these two terms – evaluating and assessment – as two similar notions, though they are entirely different. She states that when we assess our students we commonly are interested in “how and how much our students have learnt”, but when we evaluate them we are concerned with “how the learning process is developing”. These both aspects are of great importance for the teacher and the students and should be correlated in order to make evaluation and assessment “go hand in hand”. However, very frequently, the teachers assess the students without taking the aspect of evaluation into account. According to Hicks, this assessment is typically applied when dealing with examinations that take place either at the end of the course or school year. Such assessment is known as achievement test. With the help of these tests the teacher receives a clear picture of what his/her students have learnt and which level they are comparing with the rest of the class. The author of the paper agrees that achievement tests are very essential for comparing how the students’ knowledge has changed during the course. This could be of a great interest not only for the teacher, but also for the authorities of the educational establishment the teacher is employed by. Thus, evaluation of the learning process is not of the major importance here. We can speak about evaluation when we deal with “small” tests the teachers use during the course or studying year. It is a well-known fact that these tests are employed in order to check how the learning process is going on, where the students are, what difficulties they encounter and what they are good at. These tests are also called “diagnostic” tests; they could be of a great help for the teacher: judging from the results of the test, analysing them the teacher will be able to improve or alter the course and even introduce various innovations. These tests will define whether the teacher can proceed with the new material or has to stop and return to what has not been learnt sufficiently in order to implement additional practice. With respect to Hicks, we can display some of her useful and practical ideas she proposes for the teachers to use in the classroom. In order to incorporate evaluation together with assessment she suggests involving the students directly into the process of testing. Before testing vocabulary the teacher can ask the students to guess what kind of activities could be applied in the test. The author of the paper believes that it will give them an opportunity to visage how they are going to be tested, to be aware of and wait for, and the most important, it will reduce fear the students might face. Moreover, at the end of each test the students could be asked their reflections: if there was a multiple choice, what helped them guess correctly, what they used for that – their schemata or just pure guessing; if there was a cloze test - did they use guessing from the context or some other skills, etc. Furthermore, Hicks emphasises that such analysis will display the students the way they are tested and establish an appropriate test for each student. Likewise, evaluation will benefit the teacher as well. S/he not only will be able to discover the students’ preferences, but also find out why the students have failed a particular type of activity or even the whole test. The evaluation will determine what is really wrong with the structure or design of the test itself. Finally, the students should be taught to evaluate the results of the test. They should be asked to spot the places they have failed and together with the teacher attempt to find out what has particularly caused the difficulties. This will lead to consolidation of the material and may be even to comprehension of it. And again the teacher’s role is very essential, for the students alone are not able to cope with their mistakes. Thus, evaluation is inevitable element of assessment if the teacher’s aim is to design a test that will not make the students fail, but on the contrary, anticipate the test’s results. To conclude we can add alluding to Alderson (1996:212) that the usual classroom test should not be too complicated and should not discriminate between the levels of the students. The test should test what was taught. The author of the paper has the same opinion, for the students are very different and the level of their knowledge is different either. It is inappropriate to design a test of advanced level if among your learners there are those whose level hardly exceeds lower intermediate. Above all, the tests should take the learners’ ability to work and think into account, for each student has his/her own pace, and some students may fail just because they have not managed to accomplish the required tasks in time. Furthermore, Alderson assumes (ibid.) that the instructions of the test should be unambiguous. The students should clearly see what they are supposed and asked to do and not to be frustrated during the test. Otherwise, they will spend more time on asking the teacher to explain what they are supposed to do, but not on the completing of the tasks themselves. Finally, according to Heaton (1990:10) and Alderson (1996:214), the teacher should not give the tasks studied in the classroom for the test. They explain it by the fact, that when testing we need to learn about the students’ progress, but not to check what they remember. The author of the paper concurs the idea and assumes that the one of the aims of the test is to check whether the students are able to apply their knowledge in various contexts. If this happens, that means they have acquired the new material жүктеу/скачать 131,3 Kb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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