amarshaufy1023
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
ONLINE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ASSESSMENT….
Nowadays, mastering English is often associated with leading edge scientific, technological and economic development and this has made the English Language as an international language for global communication with the help of information technology (IT). The English Language is reintroduced as a medium of instruction for science, mathematics and technology related subjects back into the education system in 2001. this is to ensure that Malaysia can gain competitive edge in the global market and knowledge-based economy with a world-class workforce. But, it is important to remember that the English Language is only to complement and supplement but never to replace the role of the national language, Bahasa Malaysia.
The most immediate challenge is to develop or in some cases to reactivate the English Language skills in educators to enable them to teach effectively using English as an medium of instruction. Teachers of mathematics and science are receiving English Language training through the English of Mathematics and Science (ETeMS) conducted by the Ministry of Education.
Public universities such as Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) also tailor make professional development programs that aim to prepare lectures trained in Bahasa Malaysia, as well as those who have been lecturing in national language to conduct their lectures and tutorial in English by 2005. In this new millennium and the onset of globalization, UKM in its efforts to remain competitive in a borderless world has now given emphasize to the use of English for academic and professional purposes even though UKM is the pioneer in providing higher education based on nationalistic endeavor, adopting Bahasa Malaysia as a medium of instruction.
Central to these plans is the English Language competency of practicing academicians or in-service lectures who have been subjected to this change, particularly the medium of instruction. The cognitive processes and academic literacy skills that these educators need to engage in, employ to translate their knowledge gained, and understood in Bahasa Malaysia into the English Language is still unclear. A language competency profiling of these lectures will be useful as the information will guide and inform in their placement of language learning modules. For this purpose, the English Language competency test should profile the lectures general English Language proficiency and instructional language control in the target language. Given these aims, the test development is guided by the communicative competence theoretical construct within the “target language use domain” framework (Bachman & Palmer, 1997).
The School of Language Studies and Linguistic views language learning as a continuous development for all motivated learners. In the spirit of this principle, the School is committed to develop new approaches to help support and harness that learning. The development of English Language training modules for in-service lectures and construction of the on-line English placement test are significant example epitomizing lifelong learning practices valued by the School. This inspiration is made into reality by the provision of excellent IT infrastructure and agenda in UKM.
LearningCare PLATFORM: LearningCare is a web-based fully integrated e-learning solution which provide UKM community a tool to develop, implement and share effectively the use of web-based technology for intra and inter organization learning process. This system includes Portfolio (Courses) Management System, LearningCare Resources and LearningCare Portal System. UKM community is able to subscribe, create and manage the portfolios (courses) available from anywhere in the world.
LearningCare ASSESSMENT FACILITY: LearningCare Assessment module allows the portfolio to create and manage questions. The question can be programmed in several forms, which are
· Fill in the blanks;
· True and false;
· Multiple-choice;
· Multiple answer;
· Matching;
· Ordering;
· Short essay.
All the questions and result of the test takers are kept in a database built in the system. Portfolio owners can select and make informed choices on whether to display certain quiz or test on certain time and date only and the duration of the quiz taken can be specified and controlled. Test takers need specific password to take the assessment exercise. This system also provide randomization of questions, and shuffling of the question which are the basic principal of on-line testing.
The most immediate challenge is to develop or in some cases to reactivate the English Language skills in educators to enable them to teach effectively using English as an medium of instruction. Teachers of mathematics and science are receiving English Language training through the English of Mathematics and Science (ETeMS) conducted by the Ministry of Education.
Public universities such as Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) also tailor make professional development programs that aim to prepare lectures trained in Bahasa Malaysia, as well as those who have been lecturing in national language to conduct their lectures and tutorial in English by 2005. In this new millennium and the onset of globalization, UKM in its efforts to remain competitive in a borderless world has now given emphasize to the use of English for academic and professional purposes even though UKM is the pioneer in providing higher education based on nationalistic endeavor, adopting Bahasa Malaysia as a medium of instruction.
Central to these plans is the English Language competency of practicing academicians or in-service lectures who have been subjected to this change, particularly the medium of instruction. The cognitive processes and academic literacy skills that these educators need to engage in, employ to translate their knowledge gained, and understood in Bahasa Malaysia into the English Language is still unclear. A language competency profiling of these lectures will be useful as the information will guide and inform in their placement of language learning modules. For this purpose, the English Language competency test should profile the lectures general English Language proficiency and instructional language control in the target language. Given these aims, the test development is guided by the communicative competence theoretical construct within the “target language use domain” framework (Bachman & Palmer, 1997).
The School of Language Studies and Linguistic views language learning as a continuous development for all motivated learners. In the spirit of this principle, the School is committed to develop new approaches to help support and harness that learning. The development of English Language training modules for in-service lectures and construction of the on-line English placement test are significant example epitomizing lifelong learning practices valued by the School. This inspiration is made into reality by the provision of excellent IT infrastructure and agenda in UKM.
LearningCare PLATFORM: LearningCare is a web-based fully integrated e-learning solution which provide UKM community a tool to develop, implement and share effectively the use of web-based technology for intra and inter organization learning process. This system includes Portfolio (Courses) Management System, LearningCare Resources and LearningCare Portal System. UKM community is able to subscribe, create and manage the portfolios (courses) available from anywhere in the world.
LearningCare ASSESSMENT FACILITY: LearningCare Assessment module allows the portfolio to create and manage questions. The question can be programmed in several forms, which are
· Fill in the blanks;
· True and false;
· Multiple-choice;
· Multiple answer;
· Matching;
· Ordering;
· Short essay.
All the questions and result of the test takers are kept in a database built in the system. Portfolio owners can select and make informed choices on whether to display certain quiz or test on certain time and date only and the duration of the quiz taken can be specified and controlled. Test takers need specific password to take the assessment exercise. This system also provide randomization of questions, and shuffling of the question which are the basic principal of on-line testing.
ONLINE TEST DEVELOPMENT…
Online test construction:
- Using the LearningCare web-based system.
- Compromise on some features of the online test, as well as other language skills that would have liked to test given more sophisticated technology such as voice recognition and automated oral and written essay marking capabilities since this platform is not build specifically for testing purpose.
- LearningCare does provide a relatively simple interface for test development, scoring and statistics keeping, which made it a good platform for the development of the pilot phase of the online test that is linked to the website of the Centre of Advance Development UKM.
Online test specifications:
- Information on content, format and timing (Hughes, 1989).
- Criterial levels of performance and scoring procedures (Hughes, 1989).
Content:
- Styles and topics of texts will reflect the kinds of written text that are to be found in teaching materials of the various training modules.
- These include grammar and vocabulary items for general English proficiency, domain language use and instructional language control.
Format and timing:
- Cloze type text-testing overall comprehension
- Also called “selective deletion gap filling” (Weir, 1988)
- Conversational cloze rate the oral ability of test takers because a direct measure of oral ability is not feasible.
Criterial levels and performance:
- From five passages that were originally chosen to be pre-tested on the modering group, only three were selected and the cut off scores were determined to help test takers into the appropriate modules.
Result reporting:
- Can be obtained immediately.
- Test result summary and details on the number of user attempts, total test takers attempt, user average score, class average score, user highest score ever and overall high score.
- The result are kept in an online database, with is linked to the lecturers’ personal files.
Result on the trial session of the online test:
- During this trial session, many of the lecturers took the test just for familiarization purposes and not to self-gauge their language proficiency .
- The database showed that until June 2004, a total of 59 attempts have been made by 22 lecturers with an average of 2.6 attempt made by each lecturer.
- The highest number of attempts made by a single lecturer is 7. The total average score of the test takers is 17.72% and the highest overall score is 86%.
CONCLUSION:
The development of the online test is important for the UKM academicians so that profiling of their English language proficiency can be conducted. There are many limitations with the present web-based system especially in the test design and reporting of the scores. The limitations in the computer technology used, which is unable o assess styles of writing and performance of oral ability calls for immediate research in the area. There is also suggestion that in ensuring the validity of the online test, the test needs to be administered in a controlled environment within a specific time frame. It is also recommended that the UKM community be given exposure and training in taking the online test to get them to be more familiar with the test system and technicalities.
A summary on the “ONLINE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ASSESSMENT“ from the ONLINE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN ELT book, page 299 ( Norizan Abdul Razak, Hazita Azman, Sallehuddin Abdul Aziz, Wong Fook Fei and Afendi Hamat).
posted by amarshaufy1023 LANGUAGE AND ICT at 5:01 AM
1 Comments:
wow amar...
nice blog ha...
well done..
hehehe..
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