scholarly journals APPLICATION OF A GENERAL POLYTOMOUS TESTLET MODEL TO THE READING SECTION OF A LARGE-SCALE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 (2) ◽  
pp. i-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanmei Li ◽  
Shuhong Li ◽  
Lin Wang
Author(s):  
Umed Bokiev ◽  
Arshad Abd. Samad

Washback refers to the influence of language assessment on teaching and learning. In contrast to the wealth of studies involving external large-scale language examinations, scant research has been conducted to explore the influence of internal language assessment on instruction, particularly in the context of a university foundation programme. This qualitative study investigated the washback effects of an English language assessment system (ELAS) on the teaching and learning of English in a Malaysian university foundation programme. Apart from an in-depth analysis of official documents on the ELAS, we conducted individual semi-structured interviews with three curriculum and assessment developers, three English language instructors, four students and four alumni of the foundation programme and analysed the collected data using Miles and Huberman’s (1994) framework for qualitative data analysis. Findings indicated that the ELAS, with its different assessment forms, exerted an overall positive washback on various aspects of English teaching and learning. Yet, a number of factors related to the assessment, teachers, students as well as context mediated the extent of washback experienced. Based on the findings of the study, we put forward a few recommendations on how to encourage positive washback.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jenkins ◽  
Constant Leung

This position paper builds on three of our earlier publications on the same subject (Jenkins & Leung 2014; Leung, Lewkowicz & Jenkins 2016; Jenkins & Leung 2017), as well as a number of conference papers we have given both jointly and individually. However, what we have not done up to this point is to propose alternatives to the large-scale standardized English tests administered by the major international examination boards, of which we have been so critical, despite the fact that we have been discussing other possibilities among ourselves for several years. The opportunity to publish a position paper on English language assessment therefore provided an ideal opportunity to present our alternatives, and this we do in the final part of the paper.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Kraemer ◽  
Allison Coltisor ◽  
Meesha Kalra ◽  
Megan Martinez ◽  
Bailey Savage ◽  
...  

English language learning (ELL) children suspected of having specific-language impairment (SLI) should be assessed using the same methods as monolingual English-speaking children born and raised in the United States. In an effort to reduce over- and under-identification of ELL children as SLI, speech-language pathologists (SLP) must employ nonbiased assessment practices. This article presents several evidence-based, nonstandarized assessment practices SLPs can implement in place of standardized tools. As the number of ELL children SLPs come in contact with increases, the need for well-trained and knowledgeable SLPs grows. The goal of the authors is to present several well-establish, evidence-based assessment methods for assessing ELL children suspected of SLI.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1158
Author(s):  
Cecilia M. Onyango ◽  
Justine M. Nyaga ◽  
Johanna Wetterlind ◽  
Mats Söderström ◽  
Kristin Piikki

Opportunities exist for adoption of precision agriculture technologies in all parts of the world. The form of precision agriculture may vary from region to region depending on technologies available, knowledge levels and mindsets. The current review examined research articles in the English language on precision agriculture practices for increased productivity among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 7715 articles were retrieved and after screening 128 were reviewed. The results indicate that a number of precision agriculture technologies have been tested under SSA conditions and show promising results. The most promising precision agriculture technologies identified were the use of soil and plant sensors for nutrient and water management, as well as use of satellite imagery, GIS and crop-soil simulation models for site-specific management. These technologies have been shown to be crucial in attainment of appropriate management strategies in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of resource use in SSA. These technologies are important in supporting sustainable agricultural development. Most of these technologies are, however, at the experimental stage, with only South Africa having applied them mainly in large-scale commercial farms. It is concluded that increased precision in input and management practices among SSA smallholder farmers can significantly improve productivity even without extra use of inputs.


2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (9) ◽  
pp. 1466-1470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald F Brophy

OBJECTIVE: To examine the role of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) in the prevention of radiocontrast—induced nephropathy (RIN). DATA SOURCES: A literature search of MEDLINE (1966–December 2001) was performed using the following search terms: N-acetylcysteine, nephropathy, acute renal failure, and radiocontrast. STUDY SELECTION: Pertinent English-language animal and human studies were reviewed. DATA SYNTHESIS: Few small animal trials have demonstrated that NAC significantly prevents the development or reduces the severity of acute renal failure. Two human studies demonstrated NAC significantly reduces the occurrence of RIN. CONCLUSIONS: NAC may reduce the occurrence of RIN in high-risk patients. Further large-scale studies are needed to corroborate findings from earlier trials.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 10079
Author(s):  
Muhammad Firoz Mridha ◽  
Abu Quwsar Ohi ◽  
Muhammad Mostafa Monowar ◽  
Md. Abdul Hamid ◽  
Md. Rashedul Islam ◽  
...  

Speaker recognition deals with recognizing speakers by their speech. Most speaker recognition systems are built upon two stages, the first stage extracts low dimensional correlation embeddings from speech, and the second performs the classification task. The robustness of a speaker recognition system mainly depends on the extraction process of speech embeddings, which are primarily pre-trained on a large-scale dataset. As the embedding systems are pre-trained, the performance of speaker recognition models greatly depends on domain adaptation policy, which may reduce if trained using inadequate data. This paper introduces a speaker recognition strategy dealing with unlabeled data, which generates clusterable embedding vectors from small fixed-size speech frames. The unsupervised training strategy involves an assumption that a small speech segment should include a single speaker. Depending on such a belief, a pairwise constraint is constructed with noise augmentation policies, used to train AutoEmbedder architecture that generates speaker embeddings. Without relying on domain adaption policy, the process unsupervisely produces clusterable speaker embeddings, termed unsupervised vectors (u-vectors). The evaluation is concluded in two popular speaker recognition datasets for English language, TIMIT, and LibriSpeech. Also, a Bengali dataset is included to illustrate the diversity of the domain shifts for speaker recognition systems. Finally, we conclude that the proposed approach achieves satisfactory performance using pairwise architectures.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Bolshakova

Although a variety of the English language written olympiads (language competitions) exist, fairly little is known about how they are different from traditional forms of language assessment.  In Russia, olympiads in the English language are now gaining currency because they provide an opportunity to reveal creative thinking and intellectual abilities of pupils.  The present study examined major differences between language olympiads and traditional forms of language assessment.  A comparison of five main olympiads in the English language in terms of their levels, assessed skills and task types is made and their distinctive features are outlined.  The results of a testing of a new written olympiad of the Higher School of Economics “Vysshaya proba” (Highest Degree) in the English language are analyzed.  A set of test items was developed for 120 secondary school pupils in Moscow to find out whether they can easily cope with non-traditional form of assessment, which is language olympiad.  The results indicate that language competition as a form of alternative assessment may be introduced at schools to encourage better learning.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Ida Ayu U Wasundari ◽  
Ni Komang Arie Suwastini ◽  
I Gede Batan

This research aimed at developing culture-based English language assessment instrument for the second semester of grade seven of junior high school in Buleleng Subdistrict to support the implementation of Curriculum 2013. This research was categorized as research and development. Research and development model which was used in this research proposed by Peffers et.al (2007). The suitable English assessment for the second semester of grade seven of junior high school was English assessment with integrated Balinese culture in order to support the development of character building. The steps of developing this English assessment instrument included assessment goal analysis, assessment standard analysis, syllabus analysis, learning source analysis, designing blue print, developing assessment, expert judgment, and revision. This research produced English assessment instrument which assessed students’ affective, cognitive, and psychomotor domains. The reliability and quality of the developed assessment instrument were found out by giving expert judgment form to the experts of assessment and English language teaching. The scores which were given by the two experts were 650 from the first expert and 802 from the second expert. Based on those scores, the quality of the developed English assessment instrument was categorized as excellent. The reliability of the data was categorized as excellent in which the score of Alpha Cronbach’s coefficient was 0.9. It means that the developed culturebased English assessment instrument was suitable to be used in teaching and learning process that implements Curriculum 2013 in Buleleng Sub-district.


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