Specifics of Assessing Students’ Achievements in Foreign Language Learning in a Mixed-Level Groups

Abstract

The study presented in the article focuses on the typical problems arising from the unified approach to the assessment of students’ knowledge of a foreign language disregarding their initial level of foreign language proficiency. The aim of the study is to develop an optimal approach to assessing knowledge considering the starting level, intermediate and final goal of mastering the program of the whole foreign language course. It is suggested that at the initial stage of learning in a mixed group the emphasis should be placed on the individual progress of the student, then the practical implementation of the differentiated approach at the stages of current and final control is described, the key principles in the assessment are investigated and implemented. The article presents a step-by-step description of the testing of the proposed approach. The research methods include the study of methodological and psychological literature, the system of identifying the language level of students, the method of analysis and synthesis of experience and practices of teaching a foreign language in groups with different levels of language competence formation, the empirical method of observation of the learning process, conducting a survey among students, the method of analysis and description for fixing the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The practical significance of the work implies the possibility of implementing the proposed approach to assessment as an effective mechanism for motivating students to learn a foreign language, creating a psychologically comfortable learning environment, a means of objective control and setting learning objectives, contributing to the training of specialists in international relations who speak a foreign language at the required high level.