Assessment Issues in Languages for Specific Purposes

Abstract

While Grosse and Voght (1991) set out a well-considered overview of LSP and identified areas in need of development, they limited their observations on the topic of assessment to a short section devoted to what they called the proficiency movement. While it is true that they really did not have a lot to report on at the time they wrote their review, and that this current review highlights much interesting work done in the area in the intervening years, there remains a considerable emphasis on practice rather than on theory, with published papers attempting to identify solutions to given assessment problems, rather than attempting to build cohesive assessment theories. The primary focus of this contribution is on the latter aspect of language assessment. The article first offers a historical overview of the area over the past twenty years, which moves from a brief discussion of the issues highlighted by Grosse and Voght to the theoretical issues that have emerged, and finishing with a critical review of research on issues around assessment in three specific domains (immigration and citizenship, or work and the professions). The article then highlights current needs and priorities, focusing on issues of test usage and introducing the concept of test localization before presenting the core of the argument: a theory of LSP assessment validation. It concludes with a preliminary attempt to exemplify how a theory-driven research agenda can inform future research, and ultimately, practice in the area of LSP assessment over the coming decades.IN JUNE 1999, JOHN WALSH, IN AN IRISH Independent news article, reported that the Irish education minister had decided to end the practice of requiring all teachers in the Republic of Ireland to have successfully passed a test in the Irish language before having their post made permanent. The test used was the Ceard Teastas Gaeilge (literally the "Irish language craft certificate"), which tested a person's ability to perform his or her job through the medium of the Irish language. The certificate had, at one time, been required of all state employees, including university lecturers, lawyers, and civil servants, with different versions for different professions, including for different school subjects in the case of teachers.When I qualified as a secondary school teacher in the summer of 1977, I sat such a test. This marked my first encounter with a test of language for specific purposes.The view of specific purpose language use that influenced the developers of the Ceard Teastas Gaeilge was quite sophisticated for that time, with items related to lexis (i.e., in the version I sat, these items tested the lexis of engineering) and to actual classroom practice, in which the candidate was asked to indicate how a specific skill might be taught to a group of learners. The awareness that specific purpose assessments should be precise (Douglas, 2001) and explicitly related to a particular domain of language use was clearly embedded in the test. Today, assessment instruments have been develop...

Praksa ocenjevanja znanja pri tujem jeziku stroke v slovenskem visokošolskem prostoru

“…Ključne teme, ki so se jim posvečali oziroma se jim posvečajo raziskovalci, izhajajo iz osnovnih posebnosti in dilem, ki spremljajo poučevanje jezika stroke, to pa so odnos oziro ma interakcija med jezikovnim znanjem in znanjem stroke, vpliv nejezikovnih dejavnikov in uporaba avtentičnih oblik ocenjevanja znanja. Med novejše teme, ki zanimajo raziskoval ce, lahko uvrstimo problematiko kriterijev ocenjevanja znanja (Jacoby in McNamara, 1999;Douglas, 2000Douglas, , 2001, kar se je posebej izpostavilo z vključevanjem alternativnih metod ocenjevanja (Douglas, 2001;O'Sullivan, 2012), v tem kontekstu še posebej primerljivost ocen (ang. inter rater reliability).…”

“…Skoraj vsi brez izjeme so po osnovni izobrazbi jezikoslovci in morajo svoje znanje splošnega tujega jezika sami nadgraditi z znanjem vsakokratne stroke (na primer ekonomije, strojništva, etnologije itd.). Glede na to, da strokovne vsebine in zlasti terminologija predstavljajo vsebinsko jedro pouka tujih jezikov stroke in posledično tudi ocenjevanja znanja, je torej v literaturi pogosto izpostavlje no vprašanje, ali je učitelj TJS za to sploh usposobljen (McNamara in Ryan, 2011;O'Sullivan, 2012). Ta učiteljev specifični položaj se odraža v celotnem pedagoškem procesu in s tem tudi v ocenjevanju znanja.…”

“…Iz odgovorov lahko razberemo, da je še vedno najpogostejša uporaba najbolj »klasične« oblike, to pa so seminarske naloge. Pozitivno lahko ocenimo delež ocenjevanja na osnovi portfelja, ki med raziskovalci (Do uglas, 2000;O'Sullivan, 2012) velja za posebej primerno obliko za ocenjevanje znanja pri tujem jeziku stroke, ker lahko na ta način v ocenjevanje vključimo zelo raznolike ciljne situacije. Samoocenjevanje in kolegialno ocenjevanje si le počasi utirata pot v pedagoško prakso.…”

Survey datasets of VIKKE assessment tool on children's Finnish Sign Language development

“…The relevance of NA for the courses and examinations of LSP was claimed decades ago. Since then, NA has been not only extensively implemented and researched, but also questioned and reshaped (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987;Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998;Fulcher, 1999;Douglas, 2001;Long, 2005;O'Sullivan, 2012;Brunfaut, 2014). The LSP exam developers have often been careful to base their construction and administration process on the results obtained from interviews and surveys targeting different categories of stakeholders, consultations with experts or observation at the workplace.…”

English-Language Proficiency Requirements for Migration to Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and the Implications for Language Testing Research

“…The increase in migration globally and to Canada comes with a multitude of complex issues that require a change in thinking and, very likely, an interdisciplinary approach (Saville, 2009). Moreover, "when conceptualizing a test-in-context, we should take all elements of the context into account" (O'Sullivan, 2021a).…”