Patricia Huang
0031818
Jan. 09, 2012
Final Paper
Perception of English Language Testing in Taiwan
Summary
Tests are held to be powerful determiners of what happens in the classroom.
(Alderson and Wall, 1993, p15) In Taiwan, tests are a major determinant of course
designs and classroom practice. The possible effects of test design of the GEPT on
teaching should be explored after it is used as certification-test requirement of
graduation at universities. Fairness in this language assessment should be
reviewed.The GEPT predicts those test-takers who do not pass the first stage are not
capable of demonstrate productive skills on speaking and writing either. This test
design of two stages in the GEPT brought about negative effects on teaching and
learning. Some colleges of technology have established the first stage of the GEPT as
a requirement for graduation, and it leads teachers to “teach to the test” and students
to “cram for tests” in junior and senior high schools at present. Furthermore, teachers
may diminish the time instructing speaking and writing in classroom in order to help
students pass the first stage for graduation.
Due to the requirement of achieving an approved list of EFL proficiency tests like
TOEIC, TOEFL, ITELTS and GEPT, more and more colleges or universities are
attempting to integrated test preparation within their standard curricula.This exist
requirement influences teaching and learning at universities. Test-related instruction
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and test-driven student study patterns were more extent at schools. Moreover, most of
teachers did not turn their regular English classes into certification-test instructional
sessions and spent only a small amount of class time on such activities. Many
variables intervene teaching and learning washback of high-stakes tests such as test
stakes, format, purpose, the status of the language being tested, and skills tested. More
variable is that the exist test leads to focus on the specific skills measured by the
test-reading skills. More washback and conflicts on teaching and learning were found.
For instances, the discrepancy of insufficient professional training and superficial
changes in teacher behaviors diminished the test’s washback. The mismatch between
curricular objectives and test format and content weakened its impact. Furthermore,
teachers ignored the communicative features and simply focused on drilling factoids
into students.
Recently in Taiwan, the influence of a score on an external English test enables
individual to graduate from school or obtain job promotion. The GEPT was the most
widely used in Taiwan among other English language tests like IELTS, TOEFL and
TOEIC. The purpose of the GEPT is to promote the belief of life-long learning and
also to encourage use of the communicative approach in English teaching and
learning. As part of a project on the impact of the GEPT, it is essential to survey
teachers’ and students’ general attitudes towards and views on English language
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testing and assessment in both formal and classroom situation. Therefore, some
questions should be examined such as students’ and teachers’ view on external exams,
assessment practices in classrooms and the similarities and differences between
students’ and teachers’ views on external exams as well as assessment in classrooms.
Some major findings were obtained. The attitude of students towards classroom
assessment is more positive. Students’ attitude towards classroom assessments is more
favorable because classroom tests are frequently administered and less formal. On the
other hand, students feel highly nervous about external tests.External exams such as
the GEPT influenced teaching and assessment practices. For instances, they change
teachers’ way of assessing their students. Some teachers recommend books for their
students to read, and include listening, translation, writing and speaking in their
assessment practices in classrooms. Informal testing situations, both teachers and
students reported that reading comprehension, writing texts, and vocabulary/phrases,
were the most frequently assessed areas, and pronunciation and speaking were the
least frequently assessed.
The students felt grammar was also frequently assessed in
external exams. Finally, there was strong agreement between students and teachers’
perceptions of good and bad tests/ assessments.
Apart from the findings of the above studies, other aspects of the GEPT development
should be evaluated and further investigated as well. In order to guide the design,
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development, the interpretation and use of language assessment results of the GEPT,
the Assessment Use Argument(AUA) Framework proposed by Bachman and Palmer
is employed. They suggested in a test development project four claims need to be
articulate and supported.
Claim 1: The consequences of using an assessment and of
the decisions that are made are beneficial to all stakeholders. Claim 2: The decisions
that are made are equitable to all stakeholders. Claim 3: The interpretations about the
ability to be assessed are meaningful, impartial, generalizable, relevant, and sufficient.
Claim 4: Assessment reports are consistent across different assessment tasks, different
aspects of the Assessment procedure, and across different groups of test-takers.
By this framework, several of the gaps appear and need to be filled by further
clarification by the GEPT. For instances, the information about the number and the
background and characteristics of the raters who are recruited and are involved with
the ratings of the writing and speaking sections of the elementary GEPT is not clear.
The actual rater training and rating procedures in the actual test administrations are
not
reported
in
subsequent
studies.
Furthermore,
the
statement
of
the
high-intermediate level ability based on those selected EFL textbooks are
representative of all EFL textbooks that used in universities across Taiwan is not clear
because the MOE does not have a nationwide university-level EFL curriculum.
Moreover, bias review sections of speaking section of the intermediate test levels are
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not mentioned, and they should offer empirical studies to investigate whether the
interpretations made based on the GEPT scores provide equally good predictions of
performance on target language use tasks for different groups of test takers, gender
groups, groups of learners with different amounts of English exposure, students
versus working adults. Besides, there is not an empirical study to see whether test
scores provide significant and equivalent predictors of performance on tasks in the
target language use domain for different groups of test-takers such as junior high
school students’ performance in high schools, high school students’ performance in
universities, or university graduates’ performance after graduation. Moreover, there
was not an independent expert judgment about the degree of correspondence between
assessment tasks and target language use on the higher levels of the GEPT. One of the
most controversial aspects of the GEPT is associations between the real-world target
language use situation in the listed occupations and the language ability descriptions.
Meanwhile, it is unknown whether scientific methods have been applied to collect
opinions from all of the decision-makers regarding the usefulness of the GEPT test
scores. Additionally, follow-up studies with test-takers and prediction studies to
investigate the sufficiency of information for making decision has not been conducted
yet. Finally, these numerical scores on the four skills do not release test-takers’
strengths and weakness in performance, and the GEPT had no long-term impact on
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most students’ learning. Plus, the teachers believed that the test created anxiety among
students who have lower levels of ability.
Reflections
The process of working on the final project enables me to realize the influences on
English teaching and learning after the commencement of the GEPT and the
requirement of passing certification test. I also deeply understand the design of the
GEPT as well as how teachers and students view on English language tests. I am
surprised thatsuch a standard, large-scale and reliable English test still can be
questioned and evaluated. In a meanwhile, when I teach the test preparation for the
GEPT, the negative effects such as inadequacy of the GEPT’s design, and from
inhibition of the speaking skill to prevalence of “teach to the test” and “cram for tests”
at schools will push me to seriously consider my students’ and my attitude toward
teaching pedagogy, design of activities and syllabus and son on. Apparently, the
impact of certification test requirement does not to develop on the linear of the
purpose and belief of Taiwan’s government’s educational policy makers.
I concern anxiety for low achievement learners resulted from the requirement to pass
certain English language assessment versus high achievement or high motivation
learners, who tend to expect success in English language assessment. Low
achievement learners seem not to be provided sufficient and effective assistance in
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motivation boost and e learning strategies enhancement and improvement of English
proficiency when they encounter the pressure from certification-test requirement of
English. Nevertheless, Exam-driven teaching and learning is somehow positive. For
examples, opportunities for learners to show what they know, the pressure to pass the
test drive some learners to study English harder, and some teachers change their
teaching activities and include listening comprehension and speaking in assessment
practice in classrooms.
I am interested in and would like to reflect my view on the two issues in one of the
annotated articles. One is whether the language ability of the GEPT is correspondent
to use of English in the real-world and the other is the scores on the four skills do not
tell where test candidates need to be improved and whether their greatness are.
I do
not think the task content of the GEPT has any association with business domain or
engineers, and the results do not indicate my English ability enables me to deal with
the real-world tasks. After I receive the report card for the GEPT, I do not know why I
get passing or failing scores for the test section(s). The scores of a large-scale standard
assessment should be able to predict test-takers’ performance of English use.
Application
For teaching, teachers can help students set a goal of assessing their English
proficiency by the English language tests like the GEPT. Teachers should let students
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understand anxiety of assessment from learning and is inevitable, but it can be
reduced by good preparation for it. The inadequate two-stage design of the GEPT can
be turned into advantage. Teachers can provide instructional assistance and heavily
weight on listening and reading to help their students pass the first stage in order to
decrease their anxiety in external and formal test. Due to about three months away to
the second stage, students can suffer less stress and have much more time to review
and prepare for speaking and writing sections. Meanwhile, teachers should constantly
encourage students and offer them positive feedback or rewards to increase students’
motivation of achieving the goal. The findings of these articles can suggest that test
developers and education policy makers should concern and listen to teachers’ and
students’ reflections and voice.
For research, more comments and different viewpoints from different groups of
test-takers should be collected and revealed. In order to encourage integration of the
four skills teaching and learning in classroom, significant difference between the
design of one-stage and two-stage the GEPT may be studied and analyzed. To be a
certification of English proficiency and graduation requirement, the GEPT need to
conduct more studies to evaluate correspondence between ranges of test uses as well
as the different purposes and the test results. Because of many studies about negative
influences on the GEPT, they should offer more studies to prove and strengthen the
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positive impact of its use. We expect the GEPT can be truly a reliable, valid and
standard test which can encourage incorporation with holistic English proficiency in
classroom and outside classroom.
Reference
Pan, Y. C. (2009, December). The Impact of Test Design on Teaching.The
International Journal of Educational and Psychological Assessment, Vol 3, 94-103.
Pan, Y. C., &Newfields, T. (n.d.). Teacher and Student Washback on Test Preparation
Evidenced from Taiwan's English Certification Exit Requirements. International
Journal of Pedagogies & Learning, 6(3-2011), 260-272.
Wu, J. (2008, November). Views of Taiwanese students and teachers on English
language testing.CAMBRIDGE ESOL: RESEARCH NOTES, (34), 6-9.
Vongpumivitch, V. (n.d.).The General English Proficiency Test. English language
assessment and the Chinese learner (pp. 158-172).
Bachman, L. F. & Palmer, A. S. (in press).Language Assessment in the Real World,
Oxford University Press.
Alderson, C., & Wall, D. (1993). Does washback exist? Applied Linguistics, 14,
115-129.
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