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| Upcoming Events |
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Assessing World Languages 2019 conference is accepting abstract submissions!
The University of Macau will be host to the third Assessment of World Languages conference from the 6th through the 9th of November 2019. Abstracts for research and poster presentations will be accepted until June 30th. Preference will be given to topics that otherwise do not get very much exposure, such as assessment of languages other than English. Confirmed speakers include Alister Cumming of the University of Toronto, Liu Jianda of the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and James D. Brown of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among many others!
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2017 IATELF Conference
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The 51st IATEFL Conference will be held in Glasgow in April 2017. The IATEFL International Annual Conference & Exhibition is one of the key events in the English Language Teaching calendar. It attracts more than 2,500 ELT professionals from more than 100 countries, and involves a 4-day programme of around 500 talks, workshops and symposiums. It offers attendees a unique opportunity to meet leading theorists and writers, and exchange ideas with fellow professionals from all sectors of the ELT industry.
Click here to read more
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TEACHERS, SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE!
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Are you a teacher with great experience, advice and suggestions that you would like to share with others? Then we would love to hear from you!
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Click here to read the full story
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ILACE 2019 Call for Papers
Are you a teacher, examiner, assessment specialist or language expert that wants to build your experience presenting at international conferences and to be part of sharing best practice in English language assessment? The ILACE 2019 Call for Proposals is now open! ILACE - the International Language Assessment Conference in Egypt - is offered through a partnership between the British Council in Egypt and the American University in Cairo (AUC). The conference seeks to provide opportunities for professional development, networking, and scholarly discussion within the area of English language assessment. It also aims to promote the active participation of teachers, researchers and educational leaders in the exchange of ideas and expertise to improve, transform and reform assessment policy and practice. ILACE 2019 is taking place September 3-4 at the AUC in Downtown Cairo, Egypt. This year's conference theme is ‘Assessment in Practice: Applying Testing Principles to Classroom Use’.
Conference flyer and Call for Proposals attached. Deadline for submitting proposals is 1st May. Visit conference website here:
http://conf.aucegypt.edu/ILACE2019
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Click here to read more
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2017 IATELF Conference
|
|
The 51st IATEFL Conference will be held in Glasgow in April 2017. The IATEFL International Annual Conference & Exhibition is one of the key events in the English Language Teaching calendar. It attracts more than 2,500 ELT professionals from more than 100 countries, and involves a 4-day programme of around 500 talks, workshops and symposiums. It offers attendees a unique opportunity to meet leading theorists and writers, and exchange ideas with fellow professionals from all sectors of the ELT industry.
Click here to read more
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TEACHERS, SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE!
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Are you a teacher with great experience, advice and suggestions that you would like to share with others? Then we would love to hear from you!
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Click here to read the full story
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| Burning Questions! |
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“Can you quantify the requirements for band 7 in Grammatical Range and Accuracy?”
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It Is not possible to say precisely how many errors a candidate can make before being disqualified for band 7, or any band score for that matter. In writing and speaking, the band descriptors are the only thing that guide the examiner’s decision in which band score to award. In these (public) band descriptors, there is some admittedly vague language such as “frequently produces error-free sentences” or “uses a range/variety of complex structures”. Never is there any attempt to quantify how many errors are allowed or how many complex structures should be used.
This is not something deliberately done to obfuscate scoring decisions but has to do with the fact that productive competence in a language is in itself unquantifiable. This is why it takes training and experience for examiners to rate reliably, as opposed to the clerical markers who rate listening and reading. A “range” or “variety” in any case would mean more than one but exactly how many complex structures should be used depends on the nature of the message the candidate wants to get across and how many different structures would realistically be needed to do this. If there were an explicit minimum number of structures to be used, candidates would be encouraged to artificially increase the number of different (complex) structures used beyond what would be appropriate. This would lead to an un-natural writing process, negative washback and tarnished test validity.
Some may wonder why listening and reading, by contrast, are rated objectively, with multiple choice or short response items that are either correct or incorrect with set cut-off point for each band. This is not because reading and listening competence is any more quantifiable but rather because it is not observable. Scoring therefore cannot be based on a language sample produced by the test taker but is instead measured indirectly, often with dichotomous (right/wrong) items.
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