Progress and problems in reforming public language examinations in Europe:                 cameos from the Baltic States, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, France and Germany

Eckes, Thomas; Ellis, Melanie; Kalnbērziņa, Vita; Pižorn, Karmen; Springer, Claude; Szollás, Krisztina; Tsagari, Constance

doi:10.1191/0265532205lt313oa

Cited by 27 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…It can even have a diagnostic function, which in turn may assist in selection decisions, for example, functioning as a university entrance examination. This is exactly the case with many European secondary-school leaving examinations (Eckes et al 2005) where national examinations have different purposes. This can also be observed from the Eurydice 1 report (2009) where test purposes of national assessments are often varied and rarely onedimensional.…”

Section: Test Use and Purposes Of Large-scale Foreign Language Nationmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…In the 90s many countries of East-European block started to set up national large-scale examinations and assessments and some test designers received a proper training in language assessment while others did not. In some cases language teachers had been trained as items writers for years, but were ultimately not selected to design the 'real' examination tasks and were replaced by total novices (Eckes et al 2005). Test developers not only need the professional skills to produce good measurement instruments, but also to be able to apply these skills in creative ways, and to novel situations.…”

Section: Test Development and Test Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It takes time to build a national assessment system and if the tests are not well prepared and/or stakeholders are not well informed and far enough in advance, the consequences may be damaging. The decision-makers in two East-European countries were forced to postpone the introduction of a new examination due to the students' and/or teachers' protests (Eckes et al 2005; Pižorn and Nagy 2009). As Buck (2009:174) observes there is often considerable pressure for test developers to complete a test as quickly as possible, simply to make the project go ahead and/or make them cheaper but with more or less unpredictable and fatal consequences.…”

Section: Test Development and Test Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet a lack of funding is not the only barrier to piloting but also the assessment culture. Eckes et al (2005) report on the experience of one country where no central piloting of examination items was planned, as some stakeholders feared that pretesting could jeopardize security. The result was that the items for the centrally designed papers at both levels were written behind desks, based upon the expertise of the individual item writers.…”

Section: Test Development and Test Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most instances (e.g. the Baltic states, Hungary, Slovenia), assessment reforms started as projects and were supported financially, and what is more important professionally (Eckes et al 2005). The aims of these projects were similar: to develop a model for a transparent and coherent system of evaluation of FL performance.…”

Section: Sustainability Of Good Testing Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

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15. Assessment in educational settings

Pižorn¹,

Huhta²

2016

Handbook of Second Language Assessment

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Section: Test Use and Purposes Of Large-scale Foreign Language Nationmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Test Development and Test Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Test Development and Test Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Test Development and Test Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sustainability Of Good Testing Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

15. Assessment in educational settings

Pižorn¹,

Huhta²

2016

Handbook of Second Language Assessment

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Administration, Scoring, and Reporting Scores

Huhta

2013

The Companion to Language Assessment

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This chapter covers administration, scoring, and reporting scores from language tests and examinations. Procedures typically used in major language examinations and small‐scale classroom testing and assessment are both covered. It is argued that the administration, scoring, and reporting procedures are highly dependent on the purpose and stakes of the assessment. Selected national and international guidelines of good practice are reviewed to see what they have to say about these phases of the assessment process, and examples are given on how, for example, high stakes certification and achievement tests differ from teacher‐based formative and diagnostic tests. The review considers how the skill tested impacts on how a test is administered and scored: In particular, testing of speaking and writing differ in many ways from testing comprehension. Also, the medium of assessment has a considerable effect, as modern information and communications technology (ICT) can radically change not only test administration but also scoring and reporting. ICT enables immediate reporting of results, more detailed feedback, and even automated scoring of performances. An account is given of the research pertaining to administering, scoring, and reporting scores of language tests. Studies on test administration are not common except for types of testing where it is intertwined with the test format, such as in computerized testing, which is often compared with paper‐based testing, and in oral testing, where factors related to the setting, participants, and so forth have been studied. Scoring procedures have received considerable attention from researchers, especially when speaking and writing are concerned, and an outline and selected finding from these studies are presented. Reporting scores appears to be the least studied area, but even there some research into, for example, the meaningfulness of different reporting formats exists, and this is briefly described.

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Geopolitics of Assessment

Cheng

2018

The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching

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English as an international language (EIL) refers to the use of English as a means by which people from different parts of the world communicate with each other. Geopolitics concerns political power within and across geographic space. Within this broadly defined EIL context, this entry frames the political power of assessment and addresses this power from two dimensions. The first dimension is the geopolitics of international language testing, which deals with the testing of proficiency in English by speakers of other languages whose purpose of taking the test is to pursue academic study in English‐speaking countries, such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). The second dimension focuses on the testing of proficiency in English by speakers of other languages whose purpose is for schooling in English‐speaking countries, such as the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) in Canada and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy in the United States.

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Progress and problems in reforming public language examinations in Europe: cameos from the Baltic States, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, France and Germany

Cited by 27 publications

References 4 publications

15. Assessment in educational settings

15. Assessment in educational settings

Administration, Scoring, and Reporting Scores

Geopolitics of Assessment

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