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tests as formal assessment. But formal assessment could involve systematic
observation of students’ oral performance at the class, but it is hardly called a test
which is limited to specific time and gathers limited pieces of information as Brown
states [2].
Many scholars [2, 3, 4] claim that tests are taken in order to
a) understand whether a student gained knowledge and skills to start next level,
b) gain information about problematic areas,
c) figure out what the students have learnt, and
d) compare the students [4].
As many scholars [5, 3, 6] regarding testing or assessment highlight that every
tester has to be clear about the reason of testing or set Wh-questions, such 'What to
test?', 'How to test?' and 'Why to test?'. 'What' question is considered to be obvious
by most teachers since every of the teacher is aware of what students are supposed to
learn by the end of the course. 'How' question is of little problem as a set of test
formats are quite common in use in the English classroom thanks to access to a great
number of tests provided by international public houses such as Cambridge or Oxford
University Press and/or internet-based placement tests. As for 'Why' question most
teachers associate it with the end of a Unit or term and it is treated as a convenient
means of grading student's achievements.
The tasks that are developed for summative assessment for students of non-
language specialties at Miras University in Shymkent are targeted at testing students'
communicative and language skills. The format of tasks associates with the
competency-based approach that is prescribed in the State Program of Education
Development 2011-2020 and Core Curricular for non-language specialties for 1-year
students in undergraduate education. The core curricular for all the non-language
specialties state that students must demonstrate B2 level or Vantage level according
to the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEFR) by the end
of the course that could be interpreted that students
Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract
topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.
Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular
interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.
Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a
viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of
various options.
To demonstrate such challenging abilities students should demonstrate
competent use of language knowledge and four communication skills. It is evident
that teaching of EFL should result in the acquiring a second language for the same
purpose as the native one: to use it as a means of communication on a competent
level. Knowledge of language use is the knowledge of how to use language
appropriately-how to get it to do in the right circumstances in oral and written
format.
The State Program and Core Curricular outline communicative competence
education. However, Unified National Test as well as Intermediate state assessment
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cover questions that relate to language competence only. It could be assumed that
most practices at classes of English language mostly involve grammar and lexis
exercises. Reading and listening tasks are limited with comprehension check tasks
and rendering the plot of the texts. Working on a text students learn by rote text
patterns with little understanding of their use in another context as students are
supposed to fill in the gaps with this or that so called "active" vocabulary or
grammar structure.
Tasks that are offered for 1-year students at Miras University at intermediate
stage and final exam involve grammar and vocabulary tasks as well as
communicative ones. The latter refer to oral communication and reading
comprehension. Oral communication is assessed via dialogue completion:
- Oh, this bag is perfect one. But I don’t think I can afford it.
a) No problem, we have a layaway plan and we can hold this item for you for
up to 14 days.
b) When they have a clearance sale, I always order a few things for myself and
my friends.
c) Try Flip.ru. This site is open for tremendous savings on the products you
need. d) Nobody will say that it’s a second-hand bag, the look is perfect.
e) The changing room is over there. You can keep up to 4 items for a trial.
It should be noted that both questions and options for answers suppose to imply
authentic use of context and language. It could be observed that the answer contains
non-familiar vocabulary. But it should be stated that reading skills imply guessing
the meaning of unknown vocabulary from the context. In the given example students
are supposed to guess the meaning of a compound word 'layout' thanks to the
familiar words 'plan', 'hold the item' and knowledge of root meaning 'lay' and suffix
'out' as away, aside. What is more the omission of the word 'layout' does not disrupt
the context comprehension. Some other phrases 'clearance sale', 'Flip.ru', 'second-
hand', 'keep up to 4 items' reflect the present day real life situation and should be as
motivating as comprehensible for students.
Reading comprehension tasks for the final assessment reflect the instructions of
proficiency tests like 'First Certificate' developed by Language Assessment agency at
Cambridge University and could be demonstrated as:
It is becoming more and more difficult for workers to switch off from work. Many
workers answer or write e-mails on the train to and from work, during lunchtime
and at home after work. A lot of people even check their work e-mail when they go
on holiday to other countries. This could change. The German carmaker Daimler is
giving its workers the choice to not receive email when they are on holiday. Daimler
workers can choose to auto-delete all work e-mail while on holiday. Daimler says it
wants workers to enjoy family time or "me time" while on vacation.
Answer the question: What can Daimler workers do to enjoy their holiday?
a) E-mails can be automatically removed from their computers to enjoy family life.
b) E-mails can be stored on their computers while they are on holiday.
c) They can change e-mails on their computers.
d) They can enjoy reading e-mails when they are on holidays.
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e) They can’t read e-mails when they are on vacation.
The wording of the answer gives paraphrase to the original version: 'removed'
as synonym to 'auto-delete' . Also students should demonstrate grammar knowledge
as active voice is transformed into passive. But the most essential is that to get the
right answer students should comprehend the whole passage but not only one
sentence.
To succeed in summative assessment that is targeted at communication skills
assessment students should get familiarized with these types of instructions at
classes. The tasks for the final assessment expect communicative teaching. So,
training sessions on lesson planning with sample of tasks are offered for teachers.
Thus, to develop reading comprehension at these session the first question I set to in-
service teachers is ‘What do you like about the text’ or ‘What new information did
you get from the text?’ to reveal other aspects of a text different from structures or
vocabulary patterns that could be tested. And it was observed these questions are
quite challenging for our ‘conventional’ teachers as they are not used to say out loud
their own opinion, think differently, transform word information into graphic format
or notice something different from structures.
Instruction setting is another crucial part of the teaching process since they
define student’s approach to the task and way of thinking. Communication skill
assessment requires from students their communication, language skills as well as
logical and critical thinking ones. Since this is the teacher's task to develop all the
skills, teachers have to involve a wide range of techniques, such as guiding questions,
yes/no or W-questions, body language, graphics, examples and so on to activate
student thinking, develop their learning skills. However, targeted at language
knowledge testing teachers restrict their classes with substitution exercises, text
retelling or W-questions with no development of creative or critical thinking skills.
Involving teachers into learning environment and setting challenging tasks they try
and get better understanding of discovering a new meaning and form. Also
negotiating on the tasks teachers reveal other formats of tasks and aspects for
assessment, such as define the word meaning, draw a lifeline/diagram, find the odd
word, and many others that disclose true comprehension but not structure recognition
only.
e.g. The theme of the class is 'Health issues'. The class involves listening task.
There is an assumption that the ability of predicting information can assist with text
comprehension. Thus pre-listening task was developed that is supported with the
graphic presentation:
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Finally, but it could be even more essential, type of assessment could define
students' motivation as doing drill exercises could make students get bored whereas
logical problem solving, or context investigating and peer teaching make them get
excited, provide learning environment and eventually result in raising self-esteem and
confidence in language learning and use. You are experiencing kind of teaching
triumph when you notice the exciting eyes and passion students reveal while
communicating at mingle activity, guessing a hidden image or expressing their ideas
that are absolutely different from your own ones. And the mistakes they make matter
nothing compared to satisfaction they demonstrate after they have managed to
formulate their idea in English, discover the right word on a text or notice the
difference in Russian/Kazakh and English wording.
In conclusion I could suggest good language and communication assessment
promote interactive teaching/learning process but not controlling one, guiding
teacher’s instructions, teacher/learner approach to teaching/learning process on the
basis of discovery but not giving and high level of motivation and satisfaction with
the teaching/learning process and achievements.
References
1.
Bachman, I. Statistical analysis for language assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
2.
Brown, H.D. Language assessment: principles and classroom practices. New York: Pearson
Education, 2004.
3.
Hughes, A. Testing for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
4.
Harris, M. and McCann, P. Assessment: Handbook for the English classroom. Oxford:
Heinemann Publishers, 1994.
5.
Bachman, L. F. and Palmer, A.S. Language assessment in practice. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. 1996.
6.
Rea-Dickins, P. and Gardner, S. Snares and silver bullets: disentangling the construct of
formative assessment. In Language Testing, 17(2), pp. 215-243. 2000.
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UDC 372.881.111.1
TEACHING ESP IN MULTILINGUAL GROUPS
Senior instructor, I.Loshkova, c.p.s.M.Novozhilova
M.Kh. DulatyTaraz State University, Taraz, Kazakhstan
Түйін
Берілген мақалада ағылшын тілін кәсіби мақсатта (ESP) әдістемелік әдебиеттерді шолу
негізінде оқытудың түрлі әдістері қарастырылады. ЖОО-ғы ағымдағы жағдайлары,
студенттердің және болашақ жұмыс берушілердің қажеттіліктері, мәтіндердің жанрлық
сараптамасы, ESP курсының тапсырмалары мен өнімдерін анықтау үшін мәтіндердің, аудио
және бейне материалдардың сараптамасының нәтижелері келтірілген. Мақалада, сондай ақ,
жобалық тапсырмалардың, рольдік ойындардың және проблемалық жағдайлардың
(кейстердің), үштілдік топтарда ESP сабақтарында сәтті қолданылатыны көрсетілген
Резюме
В данной статье рассматриваются различные подходы к обучению английского языка
для специальных целей (ESP) на основе обзора методической литературы. Приводятся
результаты анализа текущей ситуации в ВУЗе, потребностей студентов и будущих
работодателей, жанровый анализ текстов, аудио и видео материалов для определения задач и
разработки курса ESP. В статье также представлены примеры проектных заданий, ролевых
игр и проблемных ситуаций (кейсов), успешно применяемых на занятиях ESP в
полиязычных группах.
English for specific purpose (ESP) attained its status about forty years ago.
Five main concepts exist in approaches to teaching ESP: authenticity, the
register analysis approach, he discourse analysis approach, the genre analysis
approach, and needs analysis.
According to R.R. Jordan (1997), authentic texts are those ‘written by specialists
for specialists. It is not written for language teaching purposes.’[1]
The register analysis approach developed out of the need for a research base for
ESP.
The reaction against register analysis in the early 1970s brought about the
concept of text: the discourse analysis. It focused on the communicative values of
discourse rather than the lexical and grammatical properties of register.
The discourse analysis approach soon came under attack for being too
fragmentary to combine these functions to make longer texts: "We are given little
idea of how these functions combine to make longer texts." (Robinson, 1981) [2]
The genre analysis approach - came to make up for this shortcoming. This
approach considers text as a total entity, rather than a collection of unrelated units.
Dudley-Evans (1987) conveys the idea in the following way: "If we are to teach the
writing of certain very specific texts such as … the business or technical report, we
need a system analysis that shows how each type of text differs from other types."[3]
Due to the limitations of genre analysis, its research was hardly applied to
pedagogy. The conception of pedagogic needs analysis came to complement target-
situation needs analysis. This includes three types of analysis: deficiency analysis
give us information about what target-situation needs learners lack or feel they lack
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(Allwright, 1982); strategy analysis seeks to establish learners' preferred learning
styles and strategies (Allwright, 1982)[4]; means analysis investigates the educational
environment in which the ESP course is to take place (Swales, 1989) [5].
Equipped with theoretical background of ESP we designed ESP courses for
multilingual groups (for students of Law and Biology specialties). We defined our
course as a mixture of EAP and EOP, because, though we prepare them for work with
academic literature, extracting necessary information and for taking notes on lectures,
they learn a lot of special terms and solve problems they will meet at their workplace.
A teaching staff of our department conducts a survey at the beginning of the
course every year to have a clear picture of our students’ ambitions. Our students
understand the importance of English, they want to be able to communicate in
English with foreigners, and at the same time to get prepared for the international
exams so that to continue their study abroad. American volunteers and fellow
students of different programs work in Taraz, which is why our students are
motivated enough for learning English.
We still need the information about potential employers to learn more about job
responsibilities of graduates so that to provide them with EOP. We can get this
information from former law and biology students and from the teaching staff of their
Departments.
The stakeholders in the proposed course are:
1. The students. They are interested in Academic English to get the opportunity
to successfully continue their study abroad in the frame of Academic Mobility
Program.
2. The University. The prestige of the HEI grows if its students can successfully
study abroad, showing academic achievements.
3. Employers. Every company is interested in good specialists.
4. The country. Good specialists are a guarantee of the country’s well-fare.
The university and students want this course to be developed because:
a) it is a new course,
b) this course will help students work with foreign literature while conducting
research for their course and diploma projects.
The information obtained from the academic staff of Law and Biology
departments and State Overall Compulsory Educational Standard of the Republic of
Kazakhstan made it possible to set the following objectives for target learners:
- To read and understand academic texts on specialty, extracting necessary
information for research and project work;
- To understand and take effective notes on extended lectures;
- To participate in seminars and presentations, develop an argument, study
different cases and be able to make decisions and propose solutions to the problems.;
- To produce coherent assignments (essays, presentations, surveys).
To find out key aspects of the genre of authentic texts on specialties, we have
done a mini-Genre Analysis of a few texts and below we list our generalized findings.
The texts (among them are three video lectures) would be appropriate for
EAP/EOP Law and Biology target learners.
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Linguistic competence
There are a lot of professional terms, Latin terms such as ratio decidendi, obiter
dictum, stare decisis (Law); feliedae, chordata, mammalia (Biology) etc.
In grammar terms, there are a lot of sentences with If-clauses in speech genre (in
video lectures) for lawyers.
Sociolinguistic competence
The texts and video lectures are intended to communicate with Law and Biology
students because they contain a lot of terms and cover the topics that are of interest
for their professions.
The materials we analyzed are of formal genre. A lot of judicial and biological
terms, clear structure of the texts and AV texts make them formal.
Discourse competence
Texts and AV texts are well-structured: introduction, content definition or, in the
second case, case description with supporting examples, conclusion.
The moves, which are typical to the materials we analyzed, within the judicial
texts are:
Move 1 Making topic generalization
Move 2 Concept definition
Move 3 Exemplifying judicial concept with appropriate cases
Step 1 Establishing the facts of the case
Step 2 Arguing the case
Step 3 presenting judgment
Move 4 Restating concept definition.
Biological texts have almost the same moves except arguing the case
and presenting judgment.
To illustrate some practical applications of ESP course, we would like to give
examples of project work and problem solving for target learners.
Project work- a group project gets students talking and they work well as long
as:
The topic is centred on the learners’ interests
Students carry out research in groups
Students can present their work orally to the rest of the class.
Biology
Project ‘Vitamins for healthy life’ You are organising a campaign in your
university to encourage students to keep a healthy lifestyle . Work in pairs or groups
and design a poster.
Law
Project ‘History of Law in Kazakhstan from Ancient times to Nowadays’
Students in groups find out information on the theme of the project and prepare
presentations on their findings.
Case study- is the most challenging task, as it is close situations the students
face in real business life. The students are given a background, then the task and the
questions the group should discuss. Finally, they work out an action plan to solve this
or that problem.
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Law
Battery burglary deception defamation false
imprisonment fraud libel homicide negligence
trespass slander theft
Discuss these questions.
1. What types of tort are commonly recognized by lawyers?
2. What is the main difference between a tort and a crime?
The defendant mounted a campaign of hate against an ex-work colleague over a
period of 20 months. He sent over 800 threatening letters, would follow her home,
wrote offensive word on her front door, drove past her house, stole items from her
washing line. As a result, she suffered clinical depression.
The defendant peered through the window of a young woman's home late at
night. He had entered the garden and went up to the window and peered through a
gap in the curtain. The woman saw him and screamed but he did not move but kept
staring she phoned the police.
Discuss in groups whether an assault in each situation is a tort or a crime? Think
of possible charges and defenses.
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