|
|
|
| 2018年度 異文化言語教育評価論 |
Chapter
1 Mediating Assessment Innovation: Why Stakeholder Perspectives Matter (p.1～p.8)
Y H
Modern
Language and Cultures, 1st year student of doctor’s course
1.1 Introduction
This book recounts a story of assessment innovation,
especially focusing on the assessment of senior high school students’ spoken
communicative proficiency in a modern foreign language (FL) in New Zealand.
Until recently, spoken proficiency was measured by a one-time end-of-year
interview test between teacher and student. This type of assessment is
called, “converse” type.
The intention of the new assessment called “interact” is that spoken
proficiency will be principally measured by capturing a range of genuine student-initiated
peer-to-peer interactions as they take place in the context of regular
classroom work throughout the year.
This book tells the story of the early years of the reform with particular focus
on two key groups of stakeholders – teachers and students in schools- and
their perspectives on the new assessment as derived from a range o surveys and
interviews.
The purpose of this chapter is to set the scene for, and provide the
theoretical rationale for, a study that focuses on stakeholder view.
(p.3)
1.2 Background: The Importance of Interaction in
Foreign Languages Pedagogy
1.2.1 Communicative Language Teaching
In the UK, in the early 1970s, Communicative
Language Teaching or CLT heralded an emphasis on language in actual use for the
purpose of fulfilling learner’s’ needs in concrete situations. The introduction
of CLT marked a significant shift in pedagogy away from a
linguistic/grammatical emphasis as represented through such approaches as
grammar-translation and audio-lingualism. In its place, the emphasis became
“what it means to know a language and to be able to put that knowledge to use
in communicating with people in a variety of settings and situations”
(Hedge, 2000). A parallel development in the US witnessed the birth, at the
start of the 1980s.
From a historical perspective, both British and American advocates came to view
CLT as an approach that “aimed to (a) make communicative competence the goal
of language teaching and (b) develop procedures for the teaching of the
four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and
communication” (Richards and Rodgers, 2014).
Philip, Adams, and Isawhita(2014) make clear,
the shift from teacher-led to student-centered has precipitated increased
understanding and appreciation of the valuable learning potential of peer to
peer interactions. They describe peer interaction as “any communicative
activity carried out between learners, where there is minimal or no
participation from the teacher”.
The proficiency movement and a focus on interaction is the end-goal of
automaticity in language use (DeKeyser, 2001; Segalowitz, 2005).
Pedagogically, the fundamental place and value of spoken communicative
interaction have been supported by specific realizations of CLT such as task-based
language teaching (TBLT).
TBLT “aims to reconcile on the one hand, the primary importance of fluency
(with its implications for…communication) with due attention, on the other
hand, to accuracy (with its implications for proficiency)” (East, 2012). If
automaticity is the end-goal, De Ridder, Vangehuchten, and Sesefla Gomez
(2007) propose that TBLT “leads to a higher level of automaticity than the
traditional communicative approach” because it “stimulates the process
of automatization to a larger extent than purely communicative course with a
strong systematic component”.
(p.5)
1.2.2 Communicative Language Testing
There was a move towards an understanding of
language use as “the creation of discourse, or the situated negotiation of
meaning, and of language ability as multi-componential and dynamic. Bachman
goes on to argue that this move would require those who wished to assess
language proficiency to “take into consideration the discoursal and
sociolinguistic aspects of language use, as well as the context in which it
takes place”.
On the basis of arguments concerning the real-world communicative outcomes of
the CLT classroom, the principle of authenticity became fundamental to debates
around language tests (Morrow, Wood).
In other words, “if we want to find out how our students are likely to
perform in real world language use tasks beyond the classroom, we need to
create assessment opportunities that allow them to use the type of language
they are likely to encounter beyond the classroom” (East, 2008a).
(p.6)
1.3 Curriculum and Assessment Reforms in New Zealand
1.3.1 Overview
New Zealand’s secondary education sector started the
educational reform at the beginning of this century. In 2002 a new high-stakes
assessment system, -the National Certificate of Educational Achievement or NCEA
was launched.
The ‘skills’ or ‘standards’ based system, which relies on a mix of external
(examination) and internal (school-based) assessments, replaced a traditional,
summative knowledge-based examination structure.
The continuation of a shift in pedagogical emphasis away from a top-down
didactic model to one that was more learner-centered and experiential
was seen in the launch of a revised national curriculum for schools, published
in 2007 and fully implemented from 2010.
The revised curriculum also saw the establishment of a new learning area-Learning
Languages. This learning area “puts students’ ability to communicate at the
center.”
Between 2008 and 2010, a subject-wide review of the NCEA was conducted. Its
end-goal was to create new NCEA assessments, aligned with the aims and
intentions of the revised curriculum. The introduction of interact in place
of converse has been one outcome of this process, based essentially on the
argument that interact would promote more opportunities for authentic spoken
interaction than converse had achieved.
(p.7)
1.3.2 Implementing Assessment Reform: A Risky
Business
Implementing assessment innovation is however, a
process fraught with challenges, and the New Zealand case is no exception.
Bachman and Palmer (2010) argue that “people generally use language assessments
in order to bring about some beneficial outcomes or consequences for
stakeholders as a result of using the assessment and making decisions based on the
assessment”.
Bachman and Palmer (2010) states “assessment developers may provide warrants to
the beneficience of the assessment in order to support an argument about the
use of the assessment, but rebuttals to those warrants might bring that
argument into question. It is important to consider the kinds of evidence
that are required to help all of us (teachers, students, assessment developers,
and so on) to come to an appropriate conclusion about the validity and
usefulness of new assessments.
Discussion point:
1. From the two keywords, “converse” and “interact”
type of speaking assessment, what would you actually imagine the method of testing?
Can you think of any activities to assess “converse” and “interact” type of
speaking?
2. Have you ever noticed change in the assessment
system or method in any high-stakes English test (in Japan, Eiken, TOEIC, TOEFL,
and so on) you have taken in the past? Which one and how was it changed?