BACK TO BASICS BILC Professional Seminar Bled Slovenia

BACK TO BASICS BILC Professional Seminar Bled, Slovenia Briefing: The Problems of Language Proficiency Testing before a short-term Language Course Maxim Galiev, Russian Federation

Testing before a short-term language course • A short-term language course is referred here to a course which duration doesn’t exceed 3 months. • It may be a critical element because of the short duration of the course; • It is likely to be organized to get the initial information about the students (aptitude, available level of language proficiency before the language course starts); • May be necessary to divide the incoming students to a certain groups according to their aptitude or/and the achieved level of language proficiency. • It gives the information to compare with it during and in the end of language course.

Generally testing before a short-term language course can be of two types • When it is conducted before learning a new language it can be in a form of aptitude test, especially when it is a language completely different from previously learned European languages • Like a placement test, i. e. in order to measure the proficiency in a certain language studied before. It is used prior the refreshment course or advanced course or course of Language for specific purpose

Testing the level of knowledge of a foreign language prior to the short-term language course is quite effective diagnostic tool and it has the following objectives: • Determining the level of language proficiency, compared with a specified threshold for each of the types of speech activity; • The measuring of each of the students proficiency in order to find out their rating, that will helpful to form groups (placement test).

The results can be used in the formation of the desired groups that training will commence simultaneously. These are the following variants of how the results of the testing can be used: 1. According to the principle of strict ranking of students, it is recommended to create a group of the most powerful students , then a group of weaker-prepared, and so downward. In this case, each successive group has a different program on the content, which should be dealt with the elements of language competence, that is supposed to be developed. As a result, the weakest team can start training with the basics of the language. Obviously, with an equal allocation of teaching time different groups come to different results, which could be measured by the achievement test. 2. Another approach is to distribute strong and weak students evenly between the groups if practicable. In this case the groups are equal in strength and use the same program. Disadvantage is the containment of the learning process because more time must be given to weak students, while stronger students are retarded in their development. There is a kind of leveling of individuals. 3. An alternative approach can be a balanced group formation, in which a certain amount (for example, a quarter) of the group is made up of individuals who are one step behind in different types of speech activity. With such a group, they are a minority, which is compelled to gradually catch up to the level of the other members of the group , the difference in the education is not so great as to hamper the progress of the majority of students, but rather allows the minority under the influence of the teacher to successfully follow the majority of the students. Another positive fact is that the differentiation in the end of the course is not as great as in the first case. This allows the use of 2 -4 variants of the program according to their complexity, and not a number of programs, which is the total number of groups.

• Testing of the language proficiency in its pure form can be associated with courses for continuing education or for courses in a particular specialty. Demonstrated proficiency in a foreign language can not always be used to assess the prospects of learning of another foreign language, especially some oriental languages. That is why aptitude tests are necessary to be taken by the students. • Another problem is to the skills to be trained during the course. We can assume that the level of reading and writing proficiency in a foreign language does not give enough information to make decisions in the organization of intensive communicative course of spoken language. In contrast, high scores for oral forms of speech activity is not a clear indication of that one should be sent to attend the course related to the development of the written language in a particular sphere.

Course content and the configuration of the test. • There is a relation between course content and the configuration of the test. In other words, when there is a language course that has an approved curriculum it should be taken into consideration, because the test is supposed to measure if a student meet the minimum which allows to start the course without significant loss of time and reduce the quality of training.