Necessity and Ways of Improving Testing in College English Writing Class
(Foreign Language Institute of Nanjing Agricultural University, Jiangsu, 210095)&&
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Abstract: Language testing has been applied in the teaching of English writing in colleges. But due to certain wrong concepts, language testing is only seen as a means to provide students with writing scores. The current application of language testing in college English writing class is not ideal and there are problems to be solved. This article focuses on the necessity and feasibility of improving English writing testing in class from the teachers’ point of view and hopes to put forward some helpful suggestions.
Key words: L E Improvement of writing proficiency
1 Introduction
It’s commonly accepted that language testing, as an independent subject, has its own research field and research methods. Language testing provides a scientific testing tool, which can give objective, correct and fair evaluations of students’ language competence, to testify the effect of teaching. Testing syllabus is usually constant and it is made public, but the scale of a language test should be based on factors such as purposes, contents, language variables and so on.
&However, language testing has not been made full use of in English writing class. There are some problems to be solved. Teachers, in particular, are responsible to make great efforts to solve those problems. Some language teachers have begun to study on the problems reflected in writing testing and published some articles concerning those aspects but the systematic study on the reflection on the necessity and feasibility of improving English writing testing from the teachers’ point of view is far from enough. Therefore, the writer of this paper hopes to make a study on the aspect mentioned above with a good wish to provide some beneficial suggestions. Due to the limitation of this paper, the present study can not cover all the aspects related.
A questionnaire analysis is made in order to validate viewpoints involved in the article and to provide some useful suggestions.
&Categorization of English Writing Testing
Writing is one of the four language skills. Accordingly, the testing of English writing should be paid enough attention to. English writing testing may generally be described as the one which is direct, integrative, criterion-referenced and subjective. The concept of testing is general while the conduction of it can be reflected in various kinds of test, which are more specific and concrete. The followings are the related concepts and distinctions which are extracted from Testing for Language Teachers.
Classification of Testing
2.1.1 Direct versus Indirect Testing
Testing is said to be direct when it requires the candidate to perform precisely the skill which we wish to measure. There are a lot of advantages of direct testing, for example, they are straightforward to create and assess, easy to carry out and to achieve helpful and beneficial backwash effect.
Indirect testing attempts to measure the abilities which underlie the skills in which we are interested. Indirect testing can offer the possibility of testing a representative sample of a finite number of abilities which underlie a potentially indefinitely large number of manifestations of them.
Discrete Point versus Integrative Testing
Discrete point testing refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by item. Integrative testing, by contrast, requires the candidate to combine many language elements in the completion of a task.
Norm-referenced versus Criterion-referenced Testing
Norm-referenced testing relates one candidate’s performance to that of other candidates’ while criterion-referenced testing is designed to provide specific information on a candidate’s performance without any reference to others’.
Objective Testing versus Subjective Testing
If no judgment is required on the part of the scorer, then the scoring is objective. If judgment is called for, the scoring is said to be subjective.
2.2 Categorization of Test
The type of tests varies with the demands of testing. Although achievement test has taken an essential place in English writing test in class, it does not mean that other kinds of tests should be excluded.
2.2.1 Proficiency Tests
Proficiency tests are designed to measure people’s ability in a language regardless of any training they may have had in that language. The content of a proficiency test, therefore, is not based on the content or objectives of language courses which people taking the test may have followed. Rather it is based on a specification of what candidates have to be able to do in the language in order to be considered proficient.
Achievement Tests
Achievement tests are directly related to language courses, their purpose being to establish how successful individual students, groups of students, or the courses themselves have been in achieving objectives. They are of two kinds: final achievement tests and progress achievement test.
Diagnostic Tests
Diagnostic tests are used to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses. They are intended primarily to ascertain what further teaching is necessary.
Placement Tests
Placement tests are intended to provide information which will help to place students at the stage (or in the part) of the teaching program most appropriate to their abilities. Typically they are used to assign students to classes at different levels.
3 &Literature Review of Approaches to Language Testing
There are four main approaches to testing. The approaches should not be regarded as being strictly confined to certain periods in the development of language testing. Moreover, they are not always mutually exclusive. The classification can be seen from Writing English Language Tests.
3.1 The Essay-translation Approach
This approach is commonly referred to as the pre-scientific stage of language testing. No special skill or expertise in testing is required: the subjective judgment of the teacher is considered to be of paramount importance. Tests usually consist of essay writing, translation, and grammatical analysis. The tests also have a heavy literary and cultural bias.
3.2 The Structuralist Approach
This approach is characterized by the view that language learning is chiefly concerned with the systematic acquisition of a set of habits. It draws on the work of structural linguistics, in particular the importance of contrastive analysis and the need to identify and measure the learner’s mastery of the separate elements of the target language. The features of the structuralist approach are still valid for certain types of test and for certain purposes.
3. 3 The Integrative Approach
This approach involves the testing of language in context and is thus concerned primarily with meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse. Integrative tests are often designed to assess the learners’ ability to use two or more skills simultaneously and are best characterized by the use of cloze testing and of dictation.
3. 4 The Communicative Approach
With the development of communicative teaching approach, communicative testing has been attached more and more importance to since mid-eighties. Although it also emphasizes the importance of the meaning of utterances rather than their form and structure like integrative approach, there are fundamental differences between the two approaches. Communicative tests are concerned primarily (if not totally) with how language is used in communication. Success is judged in terms of the effectiveness of the communication which takes place rather than formal linguistic accuracy. Communicative testing results in an attempt to obtain different profiles of a learner’s performance in the language.
From the viewpoint of communicative approach, it is far more than enough to master linguistic forms in order to carry out effective linguistic communication. The reason lies in that the process of linguistic communication involves the aim of communication, context, relationship and role of communicators and so on. The meaning of a same linguistic form may vary with different speakers in different ways or in different situations. Thus, the process of linguistic communication is a process of interpretation and a process of mutual negotiation. In this case, language testing must be implemented with authentic materials in authentic context. Moreover, language testing is also designed to find out students’ ability to apply language to authentic context to achieve effective communication and to judge students’ language level.
4& Problems Existing in English Writing Testing&
4.1 Mistaken attitudes of teachers and students towards English writing testing
The most common problem regarding the attitude of language teachers and learners towards English writing testing is seen in their neglect of the importance and correct comprehension of English writing testing in their ordinary teaching and learning process.
Some testees believe that they can get a few marks even if they just write several lines. In addition, they feel that English writing training produces little effect on tests. As for the teachers, they think that English writing practice involves so wide a range of contents that it is hard to decide which are more important to teach. Furthermore, since writing testing is a kind of subjective testing which involves scorer’s personal judgement in evaluating and scoring the testees’ writing, testees may be doubtful of the validity and reliability of scores or grades. Another problem is that although some teachers often give model essays to the students as references, they do not provide students with concrete explanation to some of the possible problems in their work.
Moreover, as the result of the examinations’ orientation, most students hold a false belief that learning a foreign language just means learning grammatical rules, remembering words and memorizing structures and patterns. Some students even take it for granted that writing is just a process of translating words and filtering meaning from one language to another and that English writing testing is just a way to provide such a chance to translate ideas into English.
&Insufficient Use of Feedback
In writing class, feedback refers to the comments or information students receive on their writing. As in traditional testing activities, it’s teachers’ task to correct students’ errors. However, due to various reasons, (for example, time limit, teacher resource limit, etc), feedback from teachers may not be so detailed or timely. On the other hand, as error-receivers, many students might stop at this stage without further thinking about their errors. Some other students may not take the feedback very seriously because of the fact that some teachers only provide grades or scores without any comments. Consequently teachers can not get valuable insights into students writing proficiency. For example, teachers do not know what students think about the test items, test methods, the clarity of instructions, the timing of the various sections, relevance of the content in the light of their learning experiences or their purposes for learning the language, and so on.
&Monotony of Testing Techniques
For most writing tests, students are usually required to write one article or two articles in the blank sheet prepared for the writing tests. Other testing techniques, such as multiple choice, close, etc are seldom used. Students may feel a little boring to face the same type of testing again and again. What is worse, students’ certain part of writing proficiency may not be specially detected.
&Neglect of Students’ Cognitive Abilities in Designing Testing Content
Cognitive ability refers to one’s ability to think, memorize, recognize and classify. People’s cognitive ability plays an important part as they make use of their long term memory, relevant materials in books and personal experience to conceive, compose, express, revise and even rewrite. Within the area of cognitive abilities, people have strengths and weaknesses, and these strengths and weakness equip individuals better for some areas than others.
Writing is a complex cognitive process. If students are asked to write compositions on the topics which are beyond their cognitive ability, the students will be at a loss. The reasons are: a) They do not have enough information deposit in memory bank relevant to the given topic b) They lack proper method to activate and retrieve their long term memory c) Their sense of logic are not strong enough when organizing and classifying materials. As a result, students will not know how to express their own ideas in this case.
5. &Analysis of the Teaching Experiment
32 students from Business English Class 1 and 30 students from Business English Class 2 in Southeast University have taken writing class in Southeast University for a term. The textbook, final term examination paper and the questions they were asked in the interview are the same. The final term examination paper is included in the appendix. As can be seen, the construction of the examination paper demonstrates that the test designer tries to improve English writing testing and that the designer consciously applied several testing techniques to test students’ writing proficiency.
The following is the analysis of the interview.
Question 1: Do you think the test paper covers the knowledge you have learned in this term?
Question 2: Do you think the construction of the paper is more creative and interesting than the traditional one? (Traditional test paper here refers to the one that only asks students to write compositions on some certain topics in the blank sheet)
Question 3: Do you think this kind of test can reflect your writing proficiency more comprehensively?
Question 4: Do you think the testing time is appropriate?
Question 5: Have you got any suggestions for the test paper?
The following is the analysis of the interview:
to question 1, 59 students say yes while 3 of them think that the paper has missed some points that they think very important.
to question 2, 51 5 students think that the change does not mean much to them, and that it is more l 6 students admit that though they agree that the test seems to be more interesting, it is a little more challenging than they can successfully handle.
to question 3, all
&to question 4, 6 students say that the time was
49 students express the idea that the testing
5 students hope that the testing time ca and 2 students complain that they feel th
&to question 5, 4 students advice that the typeset shoul 2 suggest that the test items should be fewer and 3 hoped that more testing technique would appear on the paper.
The result of the interview shows that students are generally satisfied with the writing test. It also proves that the reform in English writing testing is beneficial and is acceptable to students.
6& Ways to Improve Writing Testing in Colleges
6.1& Application of More Testing Techniques
Giving instructions to students is a good way of testing is a good testing technique, but it should not be the only way. Charts, graphs, pictures may appear on the test paper. Students may be asked to write summarization, main ideas of passages, dialogues, etc. Multiple choice and close may also be used to test some certain writing proficiency.
6.2 Appropriate Writing Tasks
If students have noting to write or no materials stored in mind about a topic, the topic can not said to be an appropriate one, mainly because it is out of students’ cognitive abilities. Moreover, the distance of good learners and poor learners can not be found through the test. Things will be different if students are required to write compositions on carefully chosen realistic topics, since they are familiar with those topics (for example, environment protection, surfing the Internet, etc), they can write compositions to express their own ideas. Then composition writing can be a useful testing tool in this way. So in composition tests students should be presented with a clearly defined problem which can motivate them to write. The writing task should ensure that students have something to say and won’t feel blank in mind. If possible, meaningful situations should be given in writing tasks, as a brief description of a real-life situation might be revealing.
6.3 More Attention on Backwash Effect
The effect of testing on teaching and learning is known as backwash. Backwash can be harmful or beneficial. If the skill of writing is tested only by multiple choice items, then there is great pressure to practice such items rather than practice the skill of writing itself. Obviously, it is not desirable. As is mentioned above, backwash can also be beneficial. There are many ways to achieve this purpose. For example, an English test designer should design the paper according to an analysis of the teaching requirements and the English language needs of students. The test paper should include tasks stipulated in teaching syllabus. In addition, the testing should be sufficient to test the abilities to be encouraged. All these will help to achieve beneficial backwash. Thus, students’ writing proficiency can reach a higher standard.
6.4 Obtainment of Reliable Scoring of Writing
6.4.1 Adoption of Appropriate Scoring
The process of scoring can be either holistic or analytic. Holistic scoring (often referred to as ‘impressionistic’ scoring) involves the assignment of a single score to a piece of writing on the basis of an overall impression of it. The main advantage of holistic scoring is the fast speed. Experienced scorers can judge a one-page piece of writing in just a couple of minutes or even less. However, if a composition is scored only once, the reliability coefficient is usually not high. It will be much better if the same composition is judged four times in this way. Analytic methods of scoring require a separate score for each of a number of aspects of a task. It takes consideration of aspects of performance into consideration, and reliability is higher. However, it is more time consuming. Whether to adopt holistic scoring or analytic scoring depends on the circumstances of scoring. Holistic scoring may be a better choice for small-scaled testing group mainly because it is more economical. Analytic scoring may be called for when the scoring is conducted in a number of places.
Establishment of a Scientific Rating System
Teachers should give detailed description of bands, scores or grades, so that students can be informed of the requirements and standards of writing tasks before tests. A good example of this is seen in the book Testing for Language Teachers written by Arthur Hughes. The example shows the scoring system used in an English-medium university. In the scoring system, testees are grouped into the following eight groups:
NS&&&&&&& Native speaker standard
NS-&&&&&& Close to native speaker standard
MA&&&&&& Clearly more than adequate
MA-&&&&&& Possibly more than adequate
A&&&&&&&& ADEQUATE FOR STUDY AT THIS UNIVERSITY
D&&&&&&&& Doubtful
NA&&&&&&& Clearly not adequate
FBA&&&&&& Far below adequacy
Certainly the banding system varies with the type of writing tests, and it can be adjusted to satisfy testing needs.
Systematic Training of Scorers
For a small-scaled test, it would be favorable to have only one scorer for the sake of high reliability. Obviously it’s impossible to have only one scorer for a large-scaled test. In this case, all the scorers should go through certain training: a) They should be given copies of the banding scripts. b) They should manage to be familiar with the type of writing that the testees have produced and the problems they have had in trying to complete the writing task. c) They should discuss different opinions they might have, and try to reach a ‘consensus mark’ for each of the scripts, and to refine the rating scale so that it is easier to understand and to perform. If possible, they can do some pre-scoring.
A Desirable Environment
The scoring process needs concentration and great efforts, so it is important to ensure a quiet and well-lit environment for scorers. Conditions permitted, some humanistic service can be taken into consideration, for example, to provide air-conditioners in summer and winter, or to provide coffee for scorers so that they would feel refreshed.
7 Conclusion
English writing testing has played an important role to help cultivate students’ writing proficiency, and served English writing teaching a lot. However, it does not mean that it is perfect. On the contrary, it must be improved in order to better serve English writing teaching and to enable students to suit the requirements of the ever-changing society. The problems are not a few, but they are not incurable. With the application of testing theory and techniques, English writing testing can better fulfil its tasks and improve students’ English writing proficiency.
The reform in English writing testing is imperative under the situation and it needs a long time and great efforts of both teachers and students. It is possible to be successful.
Test Paper for Writing Course A
Part I Improve the following sentences and make them correct, concise, unified and coherent. (10)
Liu always did his work a little better than his fellow workers, that was why he got higher pay than others.
The old man hunched forward. His head tilted at an angle. His eyes half closed, looking very sleepy.
Bernard Shaw was one of the best-known playwrights.
I read the novel on the train, which did not interest me at all.
Listening attentively, a fault sound was heard.
Fred is energetic, capable, and a man you can rely on.
Dickens’ novels offer no solution to the social injustices he exposes in them.
We planned to meet just before sunrise very early in the morning.
These watermelons are large in size and sweet in taste.
There are a number of students who want to join the drama club.
Part II Combine the following simple sentences into complex sentences. (20)
We are watering the trees. We don’t have any rain for a month.
The children started arguing. I made them turn off the TV.
At midnight my roommate closed her books. I studies until 2 A.M.
We must plan our family budget carefully. The price of food has risen recently.
English is offered only in the morning. Chemistry can be taken at night.
The movie disgusted the coach. He walked out after fifteen minutes.
The house has been burglarized. Smith couldn’t sleep soundly for several months.
His vision begins to fade. He knows he’d better get some rest.
The storm hit the coast city. We crisscrossed our windows with strong tape.
The two screws were missing from the assembly kit. The two screws held the bicycle frame together.
Part III Renumber the following sentences and organize them into a coherent and unified paragraph (15)
Every time I open my albums and look at the stamps I’ve collected over the years, I learn something new.
Under a magnifying glass they look very beautiful, and they help to increase my knowledge of nature.
In this way I have come to know something about quite a few people who are famous for one reason or another.
Philately is an interesting hobby.
On many of them are printed drawings or pictures of rare birds, animals, trees or flowers.
On other stamps there are portraits of historical figures, such as Qu Yuan and Dr. Sun Yatsen, George Washington and Chester W. Nimits.
Some of my friends and relatives who know I am interested in stamps often show me used envelopes.
Whenever I see an unfamiliar name, I will try to find some information about the person by consulting an encyclopedia.
It is always a delight to add a new stamp to my collection, and the more stamps I have, the more interested I am in philately.
If I see a stamp that I have never seen before or I haven’t got yet, I will ask them to give it to me, and it seems that they are always kind enough to oblige me.
Part IV Add a topic sentence to each paragraph in the following article (15)
____________. Famous inventor Thomas Edison, for instance, did so poorly in his first years of school that his teacher warned his parents that he’d never be a success at anything. Similarly, Henry Ford, the father of the auto industry, had trouble in school with both reading and writing. But perhaps the best example is Albert Einstein, whose parents and teachers suspected that he was retarded because he responded to questions so slowly and in a stuttering voice. Einstein’s high school record was poor in everything but math, and he failed his college entrance exams the first time. Even out of school the man had trouble holding a job C until he announced the theory of relatively.
&_____________. Indians with distinctive physical characteristics might be given names such as Big Foot of Crooked Leg. If there had been a big storm on the day of a baby’s birth, the baby might have been named Thunder Cloud. Brey Eagle, Red Dog, Big Bear, and Spotted Wolf are examples of Indians named after animals.
______________ Americans, relaxing at home, for example, may put on kimonos, which is a Japanese word. Americans who live in a warm climate may take an afternoon siesta on an outdoor patio without even realizing that these are Spanish words. In their gardens, they may enjoy the fragrance of jasmine flowers, a word that came into English from Persian. They may even relax on a chalse longue while sipping a drink with vodka, words of French and Russian origin, respectively.
&_______________. A person who has drunk too much beer ets into a strange state called drunkenness. This state is marked either by an unpleasant feeling of balance, or by falling asleep. Either of these problems is dangerous for drivers. On the road, a drunk driver is too dizzy to pay attention to traffic sighs, and his lack of control may lead him to run a stop sigh, exceed the speed limit, or swerve his car. As a result, he may either hit another car or a person. It is very likely that he will crash his car, and often he will kill or injure himself and others.
________________. We are awakened by electric alarm clocks and music po we operate our toaster, brush our teeth with an electric toothbrush, and shave with an electric razor. We read the day’s headlines from newspapers printed on huge electric presses, and we write a letter on our electric typewriter before leaving for work to operate a computer and word processor.
Part V Writing (40)
Please write a composition of 200 to 250 words with the following title:
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Reference:
[1]Arthur Hughes. Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers. 1989.
[2]Skehan, P. A Cognitive Approach to Language learning. Oxford University Press. 1998.
[3]J.B. Heaton. Writing English Language Tests. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. 2000(10).
[4]J. Charles Alderson, Varoline Clapham, Dianne Wall. Language Test Construction and Evaluation. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Cambridge University Press. 2000(8).
[5]Carpenter, D.A.&Just, M.A. “Cognitive Processes in Reading”, Reading Comprehension: From Research to Practice. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1986.
& & 210095
摘要：大学英语写作教学中需要运用语言测试。然而由于一些错误观念的影响，语言测试只被认为是一种给学生作文打分的手段。语言测试运用于大学英语写作课堂的现状并不理想，且存在亟需解决的问题。本文从教师的角度分析提高大学英语写作测试方法的必要性和可行性，并提出了一些建议。
关键词：语言测试；英语写作；写作水平提高
作者简介：李维，（1981-），女，江西赣州人，南京农业大学外国语学院助教，硕士；研究方向：应用语言学
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