The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the Iowa State University administration to impose face coverings and other safety regulations across the university campus. To comply with these safety measures, several changes to the English Placement Test of Oral Communication (EPT OC) had to be made. This paper discusses how the EPT OC was adapted to comply with the safety regulations mandated by the university administration and best ensure the safety of students and raters. It also describes the different considerations that were made prior to implementing these adaptations, and our thoughts while administering and rating the test. The paper concludes with what might be learned from administering the OC test during the pandemic.
The development of a student-teachers language assessment literacy was viewed through her experiences in conducting teaching practice in one of the senior high schools in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. An interview was conducted to explore the experiences taking place in the teaching-practice in relation to the language assessment literacy development. It was found out that the experiences were understood as mostly dealing with administrative tasks and there is a need of more knowledge in administrative matter in teaching and assessment. From the results of the study it was obvious that further studies need to be conducted to explore the role of teaching-practice in the development of student-teaching language assessment literacy. More participants and multiple data collection methods in a longitudinal study are needed to help student-teachers to be more assessment literate, which in turn helps them to be better teachers.DOI:doi.org/10.24071/llt.2018.210209
This paper reviews the studies on paired oral tests in the last ten years (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017). Using the search facilities in Iowa State University's library, nine articles from some journals in the field of applied linguistics were chosen based on the inclusion criteria. Those journals are Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Applied Linguistics, and Procedia -Social and Behavioral Science. Three reasons why paired oral tests are better than interview test or individual format test are then discussed. Those are promoting and improving students' interactional competence, creating students' co-constructed discourse, and providing insights for better scale development and rater training. Paired oral tests provide opportunities for students to interact with peers in the tests, enable them to practice and improve their interactional competence. Paired oral tests also enable students to co-construct their discourse, even though there is an issue of grading the scores individually or collaboratively. The last is, more information about students' and raters' perception were gained that helps improve the rating scale and inform rater training. This paper is concluded with the call for more studies on paired oral tests to provide more insights into this complex process of creating co-constructed discourse and how to validly and reliably test both its process and product.
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