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Testing the foundations

Testing the foundations. Marie Hanlon & Simon Gooch (Loughborough College). Introduction. Outline + general purpose statement … Explore what kinds of reading/listening test items would be most suitable for foundation. The Foundation Course (4’). Nationalities, age etc.

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Testing the foundations

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  1. Testing the foundations Marie Hanlon & Simon Gooch (Loughborough College)

  2. Introduction • Outline • + general purpose statement … • Explore what kinds of reading/listening test items would be most suitable for foundation

  3. The Foundation Course (4’) • Nationalities, age etc. • The Foundation Course (modules, subjects etc.)

  4. Constraints • Specific, non-integrated • General, not subject/discipline specific • Non-IELTS • Input factual/information-based + limited by Flesch Reading Ease Scale • External examiner comments (thank you!) • 4 weeks!

  5. Data collection analysis Practice test (but not a true pilot) 2 basic data analysis measures: • Facility Index (FI) – measures item difficulty (1 = too easy / 0 = impossible! Ideally FI of .5) • Discrimination Index (DI) – how well item discriminates (difference between FI of top/bottom bands). DI 0.3, needs replacing. • Both these used with individual items, but (Fulcher, 2010) suggests can be used to measure performance of certain sections and/or same question types – we have tried this

  6. Reading test (7’) • Specifications (hand out) • Brief make up of test/questions/tasks • Analyse some question types/sections and see how successful they are – try to relate to Foundation students generally?

  7. Listening Test (1) • Specifications (hand out) • Overview of test inputs and task types • Brief overview of results • Analyse 2 sections using FI and DI

  8. Listening Test (2) • Overview of test inputs and task types: • 3 sections: • Section 1 • Short extracts – space for notes, short answers (1-4 words) – overall/general meaning

  9. Listening Test (3) Section 2 • Short lecture style – Ppt slides with main information, short answers (usually specific data) – intensive/detail Section 3 • Short lecture style – Listen first, make own notes. Hand out given, SS use notes to complete the diagram/answer questions – note taking skills

  10. Listening Test (4) Brief overview of results: • Total marks – 35 No. of students - 30 • Mean score – 15.9 • Mode – 17 • Median – 17 • Range – 24 • (40% score to pass - success rate 63%)

  11. Listening Test (5) Section 2 • FI – range for section .06 to .8 • mean for whole section .41 • DI – range for section .2 – 1 (!) • mean for whole section .55

  12. Listening Test (6) Section 3 (focus on diagram element only) • FI – range for section .1 to .73 • mean for whole section .43 • DI – range for section .2 – .7 • mean for whole section .48

  13. Conclusions • Limited sample – be careful • Statistical methods quite crude (– use of means over a section can hide variations?) • However, results suggest that these test task types seem to be appropriate and reasonably effective for testing Foundation SS academic reading and listening skills.

  14. References Fulcher Alderson, Clapham

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