Abstract
Even though standardized international communication tests have been frequently studied, very little research has explored how teachers planned listening and speaking classroom assessments or which classroom-based tests were more beneficial for teaching real-world English communication. A qualitative inquiry was undertaken to investigate these assessment issues among five English as foreign language teachers and 24 of their students through the collection and analysis of classroom observation and post assessment interview data. While teachers tended to draw on textbook listening and speaking activities to assess those skills, how they graded students focused heavily on the students’ communicative competence as listeners and speakers of English rather than on their ability to answer comprehension questions correctly in the classroom assessments. Students identified a mismatch between classroom instruction and assessments and also a mismatch between the English used in assessments and the English used in real-world communication.
Highlights
Scholars have often used the concept of English as an international language (EIL) to criticize standardized language tests
Half of the University 3 (U3) students had passed the elementary level of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) (CEFR A2 equivalent) while the other half had passed the intermediate level of the GEPT (CERF B1 equivalent)
Three out of five teachers (T2, Teacher 3 (T3), and Teacher 5 (T5)) indicated that some ideas they incorporated into their speaking assessment activities came from their experiences taking standardized English language proficiency tests
Summary
Scholars have often used the concept of English as an international language (EIL) to criticize standardized language tests. Their discussions have centered on how inadequately measurement descriptors have been defined (e.g., Jenkins & Leung, 2017) and how international, regional, or national test systems have influenced English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning (Hamid, 2014; Kim, 2019; McNamara, 2014; Zhang & Elder, 2014). Classroom-based tests and feedback on student language performance have not received equal attention in the EIL field (Nguyen et al, 2020; Yu, 2018). Most students’ English is tested by teachers with teacherconstructed assessments (Nation, 2013)
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