English Exam Research Articles

МЕТОДИКА ПОДГОТОВКИ ЭССЕ В ФОРМАТЕ МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ЭКЗАМЕНОВ ПО АНГЛИЙСКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ

Today experts with a high level of proficiency in a foreign language are considered in demand in the labour market. The level of foreign language proficiency is confirmed by a high test result of international exams in a foreign language. The essay is a mandatory part of international English language exams such as TOEFL, IELTS, and Cambridge Advanced English. We examined the requirements and assessment criteria for the essay writing exam task. The task assesses the level of speech skills formation necessary to create your own pieces of writing in a foreign language. As part of the research, we developed a technology for teaching writing based on a product-oriented approach. According to the technology we have identified the following stages of text production: task orientation, text planning, text writing, and text self-editing. We have also proposed a set of exercises aimed at developing following skills: task understanding, formulating the author’s point of view and its proving with relevant examples, planning a cohesive and coherent text, text division into paragraphs, highlighting of the paragraph’s main idea, development of the idea in the text, expressing ideas in the text logically in accordance with the rhetorical structure of English essay, usage of lexical cohesive means, text self-editing. This technology was tested during experimental training; its results prove the effectiveness of the proposed technology for teaching essay writing according to international English language exams requirements.

The Effects of Utilizing Smart Phones in Enhancing Students’ English Essay Writing Skills in Pakistan

The objective of this study was to investigate the role of smart phone & PowerPoint in motivating and enhancing students’ English Essay writing skills in Pakistan. Being quasi-experimental in nature, the study adopted mixed method design blending quantitative as well as qualitative approaches for data collection and analysis. The 90 registered intermediate students of the Government M.A.O. College, Lahore and two lecturers participated in the study. All of them were having homogeneous characteristics concerning their age as well as their scores in the first-year English exam. Both experimental and control groups had 45 students each. Three instruments including pre-test/ post-test, questionnaire on motivation and semi-structured interviews were employed in the study. To measure the students’ performance in essay writing skills pre-test and post-test were employed. The quantitative data was analyzed using the SPSS Windows program Version 22 for which independent samples t-test was applied for the inferential statistics. However, for the descriptive part, the qualitative data was analyzed and interpreted based on the emerging themes. The findings from the quantitative data analysis indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group both in their motivation score as well as the score in writing skills. In addition, the findings from the qualitative data revealed that mobile phones had not only motivated the students but also helped to enhance their writing skills. Findings from the qualitative data support the findings from quantitative data. These findings have strong theoretical, pedagogical and practical implications.

Everyone Is Thinking of You

Everyone Is Thinking of You Nathan Alling Long (bio) Three doctors came into my room and drew the curtain around my bed. The same three had come in earlier that morning and prodded my stomach, asking me when it hurt most—the same test they'd performed the night before, when I was admitted to the hospital with intense abdominal pain. Each time I told them that my belly hurt all the time, they looked unhappy and left. Now, they stood over my bed solemnly until one of them whispered in a scolding tone, "You aren't gay, are you?" I knew what they were implying—that I might have AIDS. It was the spring of 1986, and AIDS was in the news nearly every day. It's hard to convey how pervasive homophobia was in the country at that time, even within the Washington beltway. What people knew about the disease seemed half science, half speculation and fear. I lay there in the hospital bed, exhausted from a night of no sleep and constant pain, feeling embarrassed and angry. The three men hovered over me, all wearing white coats, which were unable to cover their prejudices. The question was full of assumptions. They didn't ask me if I'd ever had sex, or specifically, unsafe sex. They'd only asked if I was attracted to men, as if that alone was a basis for diagnosis. I was afraid to tell them I had a boyfriend, because I feared they would judge me and not want to take care of me. Besides, my sexual preferences seemed none of their business. Still, I didn't want to lie; I didn't want to be ashamed about who I loved. Beneath all of those feelings was a more subtle issue: I did not actually feel like the true answer to their question was yes. I'd just turned twenty-one, was finishing my final semester of college, and didn't like labels. When I thought of gay, I thought of men who used hair products and went to night clubs where disco music blared and everyone ignored me. As I'd told my parents the year before when this issue had come up, I simply loved who I loved—which at that time was a boy named Andy. But in my hospital room that morning, I didn't have the energy or confidence to explain all that to these strangers. Or to tell them that in my life I'd only had safe sex, with one woman, and two men, all within the last two years. It was unlikely that I had AIDS—or that I even had contracted HIV, a term that wouldn't be officially adopted until later that year. Despite all this, I feared that their suspicion about my mysterious illness might be true. "Yes," I finally said, trying, despite their disapproving stares, to say it without embarrassment or shame. [End Page 44] The doctors looked at each other gravely, and without asking any more questions, told me they needed me to be tested, then left the room. ________ A few days earlier, I'd been home at my parents' house in Western Maryland for the weekend when I noticed my belly bloating. I felt as though I'd drunk a gallon of water. My mother thought I might have appendicitis. "But it doesn't hurt," I said. "And the appendix is down here," I added, pointing to my lower stomach. She nodded her head sideways once, a gesture which I'd come to learn meant, We'll see. I thought the swelling might simply be from stress. My housemate Meredith had committed suicide few weeks earlier, and I had been the one to organize a ceremony for her at the university. And now the closing weeks of the semester were upon me: a five-hour Honors English exam, four other finals, and an Honors paper on Sam Shepard for which I had to read forty plays. But what occupied my mind most was having fallen in love for the first time. Though I'd known Andy—a lanky, goofy boy with no facial hair and tiny Ben...

Training sessions for postgraduates to pass the English exam

Foreign language is a mandatory subject at all stages of higher education - from bachelors to doctoral studies. Knowledge of a foreign language at the present stage of development of science and technology is a very important skill for expanding the exchange of scientific ideas. It is impossible to conduct research in a single country without using world experience. Even with advanced technologies that no one else owns, scientists are forced to study the world’s experience in different fields of activity in order to develop them. Any sphere of human activity involves various developments, so all Sciences are interconnected. Training of young scientists in various fields of science is also based on communication. Without a language, both native and foreign, it is impossible to communicate and understand the subject of study. Reading scientific articles in a foreign language requires knowledge of language grammar and terminology, but as for scientists, this terminology should be narrowly focused. There can be no ambiguity or different interpretations. On the other hand, if we take English words as an example, most of them are polysemantic. Accordingly, it is necessary to operate with the meaning that is applicable in a specific area of use of the term.

Statistical Characteristics of English Entrance Exams of National Universities in Japan

In spite of the decreasing population of teenagers in Japan, the university entrance exams continue to be one of the toughest events where their intelligence is tested, which include their competency level of English. However, very few researches have conducted on English exams. This study is a part of the continuous study the researchers have started in 2017, which studied the English entrance exams of eight national universities. They were selected from the list according to the T-score; two schools from 4 levels. The current study added the results of 2018 exams of the same universities. Upon digitalizing their English exams, the researchers first measured their readability levels using Ozasa-Fukui Year Level. They also performed Correspondence Analysis to study the interrelations among the nine exams. All eight exams are measured to be 7 th year or higher by Ozasa-Fukui Year Level, which is created to measure English level according to the 6 years in the secondary school system in Japan. The correspondence analysis produced 7 dimensions. However, due to the unexpectedly high value of one exam, the other seven exams’ interrelations became obscured; we have decided to perform another analysis without that particular exam. Its results showed that the seven exams could be categorized according to “business and culture” and “family.” The researchers further employed Cluster Analysis to study all seven dimensions produced by Correspondence Analysis, which showed that Kyoto18 and Hokkaido18 have strong ties with each other. We believe this study has given us a definite starting point for the research on the university entrance exams in Japan. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijhss.11.6.2

Mutual recognition of certification systems: The case of SERMO and ACLES

Abstract The Association of Language Centres in Higher Education in Spain (ACLES) and the Association of Academic Foreign Language Centres in Poland (SERMO) established the mutual recognition of their English language competence certificates (CertAcles and ACERT examinations) in 2017, on the basis of previously performed analyses of routine pre-exam and exam procedures, specifications and applied evaluation criteria. This paper represents a further step towards comparability by reporting the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of data from a summer examination session in 2018 carried out with Spanish and Polish students who took a commonly developed English exam combining the features of both certification systems. The exams were carried out at Universitat Politècnica de València (ACLES) and Poznan University of Technology (SERMO) and the data was collected by means of test scores, student and teacher questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The results obtained are encouraging and provide a strong basis for further collaboration between the certification systems. Furthermore, they give support to the mutual recognition of our certificates while encouraging similar studies with other non-commercial university accreditation frameworks. These initiatives are in line with the objectives of the Bologna Process, facilitating student and staff exchange between institutions within the European Higher Education Area.

Test fairness: Examining differential functioning of the reading comprehension section of the GSEEE in China

This study investigated differential item functioning (DIF), differential bundle functioning (DBF), and differential test functioning (DTF) across gender of the reading comprehension section of the Graduate School Entrance English Exam in China. The datasets included 10,000 test-takers’ item-level responses to 6 five-item testlets. Both DIF and DBF were examined by using poly-simultaneous item bias test and item-response-theory-likelihood-ratio test, and DTF was investigated with multi-group confirmatory factor analyses (MG-CFA). The results indicated that although none of the 30 items exhibited statistically and practically significant DIF across gender at the item level, 2 testlets were consistently identified as having significant DBF at the testlet level by the two procedures. Nonetheless, DBF does not manifest itself at the overall test score level to produce DTF based on MG-CFA. This suggests that the relationship between item-level DIF and test-level DTF is a complicated issue with the mediating effect of testlets in testlet-based language assessment.

A Study on the Problems and Countermeasures of Oral English Teaching in Rural Junior Middle Schools under the Background of Man-machine Dialogue Examination in China

English is a main subject of high school entrance examination in China. Many Students have learned English for more than ten years, but they are still unable to communicate with others in English after they graduate from middle school or even high school because of the poor oral English. With the advocacy of the new curriculum reform and quality-oriented education, many provinces and municipalities in China have introduced oral English test into the English exam of high school entrance examination. However, comparing with urban students, students’ oral English in rural areas is relatively weak, which is undoubtedly a huge challenge for rural junior middle schools. Hence, rural junior middle schools need to take measures to improve the oral English of students. This paper analyses the problems of oral English teaching in rural junior middle schools from the aspects of teaching facilities, teachers and students, putting forward some suggestions accordingly.

Learning English from YouTubers: English L2 learners’ self-regulated language learning on YouTube

ABSTRACT Focusing on a growing English-learning trend in Taiwan, this study investigated EFL university students’ self-regulated language learning on YouTube outside of the classroom. Twenty university students who had substantial experience of watching YouTubers’ English-teaching videos were invited for an individual interview to bring to light their perceptions of this self-directed learning approach. Their responses were analyzed to provide insights into learners’ attitudes toward this technology-enhanced learning strategy and its impact on their learning of English. Results show that the most highlighted purposes for learning English on YouTube were to explore more learning resources, to seek the attraction of learning English, and to explore cultural knowledge. After viewing the videos on YouTube, the students were more likely to press like and share the videos with their friends. Moreover, learning English on YouTube was considered to be more flexible, more interesting, and more interactive than formal learning in the classroom; nevertheless, this informal learning approach was also deemed less effective for students who wanted to improve their English or prepare for English exams. Based on the results, this study concludes by highlighting the pedagogical implications of this research and proposing the complementary use of YouTubers’ English-teaching videos to classroom learning.

English

English language teaching is an area that the Turkish Ministry of Education (MNE) tries to enhance with utmost priority. The 21st century, also known as the Information Age, is an era during which communication is mainly established in English. The main problem encountered by students while learning foreign languages is that teachers focus mostly on correcting grammar mistakes rather than improving communication skills. This has a negative effect on students learning of English and results in the development of negative attitudes among them toward their success in English classes. The aim of this study is to identify how the Boray Technique (BT) affects sixth grade secondary school students’ levels of success in their English classes and their attitudes toward English classes. This study collects and compares students’ English exam scores, attitude scale scores, and the teachers’ opinions about students. The findings of the study showed that BT had a positive effect on both level of success and the attitudes of students toward their English classes.   Key words: English language education, language learning, language teaching, English language classes.

An Analysis of Public Secondary School English Teacher Employment Exams: Focusing on Items in Phonology and Phonetics from 2014 to 2018

The present study aimed at analyzing item format, test content, and test trend in phonology and phonetics in the Korean public secondary school English teacher employment exams from 2014 to 2018 in comparison with those from 2009 to 2013. Findings of the study revealed that filling-out and restricted-response essay items have been evenly distributed on the test even though there was no extendedresponse essay item over the last 5 years. The items in phonology and phonetics were the second most frequent on the test (37.8%), followed by syntax and school grammar (57.3%), and its ratio tended to steadily increase since 2014. The frequency of test contents indicated that ‘consonants and vowels,’ ‘syllables,’ and ‘phonemes and allophones’ comprised high frequency while ‘phonological process,’ and ‘phonological rules’ has significantly decreased on the test. The new test trends linked to morphology and teaching methodology were qualitatively analyzed. Finally, problems of the current test and future direction were discussed.

The construction and evaluation of an English Exam Skills test for primary school students with dyslexia

The construction and evaluation of an English Exam Skills test for primary school students with dyslexia

Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Learners of English

Reviewed by Pedro A. Fuertes-OliveraUniversidad de Valladolid, Spain
 
 1. INTRODUCTION
 The Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Learners of English (MCD) is a monolingual print dictionary aimed primarily at helping upper-intermediate to advanced students in productive use situations, such as taking English exams (especially the IELTS exams) and working in academic or professional environments. It has over 121,000 collocational phrases, a figure that leads Coffey to claim that the MCD attaches more collocates to each headword than competing dictionaries, for example, the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (OCD) (Coffey 2011: 329).

Utilizing American and Korean College Admissions Exams to Assess Adult ESL Students’ College Readiness

While colleges in the United States often use standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT to measure students’ college readiness, students’ performance on other international assessments could also provide educators with useful data. Korean universities have utilized the English portion of the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) to measure Korean students’ English language proficiency for decades (Kim et al., 2012; Lee and Winke, 2013; Bae and Lee, 2018). As the majority of Korean students are English Language Learners (ELLs) (Lee, 2014) ELL students participating in English as a Second Language Programs in the United States might also benefit from taking the exam. The present study utilized the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), the ACT English Test, and the ACT Reading Test to evaluate ELL students’ college readiness in the areas of English reading comprehension and English writing conventions and style. Researchers administered the exams to international students who had participated in a semester-long, English as a Second Language (ESL) program at a regional university in the Southwestern United States. The study investigated participants’ perceptions of their experiences taking each exam. Results from student surveys indicated that students viewed the CSAT as a beneficial English assessment and would recommend the exam to other ESL students. Students’ performance on the CSAT proved relatively similar to their performance on the ACT reading and English exams. As such, the CSAT could prove a valuable assessment tool for ESL educators in the United States and across the globe.

An Analysis of Reading Subskills in a High-School English Exam: A Qualitative Research Approach

An Analysis of Reading Subskills in a High-School English Exam: A Qualitative Research Approach

7급 국가직 공무원 임용을 위한 다섯 가지 영어능력 검정시험의 유용성 분석

As of 2017, the Civil Service English Exam (CSEE) Grade 7 at the national level (G7.N) was replaced with these five EFL tests: TOEIC, TOEFL, TEPS, G-TELP and FLEX. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate whether the replacement of the CSEE G7.N with the five EFL tests is reasonable in terms of construct validity, authenticity and impact proposed by Bachman and Palmer. This study yielded three significant results. First, the five EFL tests did not satisfy the construct validity in order to be used as an alternative to the CSEE G7.N even though they are known to be a reliable measure of English proficiency. Second, in regards to the authenticity analysis of the five EFL tests, TOEFL and G-TELP were found to have the lowest degree of authenticity while TEPS and TOEIC both displayed a fairly high degree of authenticity. Finally, the results of the questionnaire survey on test takers’attitudes and perceptions regarding the EFL tests in general were found to indicate that the CSEE G7.N’s replacement with the five EFL tests may not bring a positive impact either on individual test takers or our society. The implications of this study suggest that based on the specific purpose and target population, rather than utilize the five EFL tests, the CSEE G7.N should be developed by including test items more related to civil servants’ job descriptions to fulfill the need for construct validity, authenticity, and positive impact both on candidates and society.

‘Doing’ Persuading: Actively Constructing Knowledge, Voice and Self

ABSTRACTI explore a series of incidents in my English classroom, which occurred while I was preparing my students for their high-stakes GCSE English Language exam (‘Paper 2: Writers’ viewpoints and perspectives’). I thereby attempt to confront some of my own failings and biases with regard to non-fiction and the teaching of persuasive writing in particular, as well as to unleash the huge potential I now believe it offers, when combined with the multi-voiced space of a classroom, for creative play and the productive skills of English. In doing so I argue, drawing on Vygotskian notions of the internalisation of concepts and the developmental benefits of play, that in order for truly ‘productive’ learning to occur, students need agency and a sense of empowerment to construct knowledge together, and to experiment with and develop their understanding of and flexibility with their own ‘voice’.

Corpus-based Analysis of the Difficulty Level of Vocabulary Used in the Civil Service English Exam

Corpus-based Analysis of the Difficulty Level of Vocabulary Used in the Civil Service English Exam

أثر استخدام استراتیجیة V-Shape على التحصیل الأکادیمی لدى طالبات الصف الثانی المتوسط من ذوات أنماط التعلم المختلفة وفق نموذج هیرمان Herrmann The Effect of V-Shape Strategy on Academic Achievement among Second Grade Students at Female Section with Different Learning Styles According to Herman’s Model

المستخلص: هدف البحث إلى فحص أثراستخدام استراتيجية V-Shape على التحصيل الأکاديمي لدى طالبات الصف الثاني المتوسط ذوات أنماط التعلم المختلفة وفق نموذج هيرمان والتعرف على وجهة نظرهن حول استخدام هذه الاستراتيجية في التعلم. تکونت عينة البحث في صورتها النهائية من(68) طالبة من طالبات مدرسة خديجة بنت خويلد للبنات بمحافظة الزلفي المملکة العربية السعودية ، حيث درست عينة البحث الوحدة الثانية من کتاب اللغة الانجليزية المقرر على الصف الثاني المتوسط، وانقسمت عينة الدراسة إلى مجموعتين)تجريبية، وضابطة). ولتحقيق أهداف الدراسة تم إعداد اختبار تحصيلي في مقرر اللغة الانجليزية، واعداد استبيان مؤشر أنماط التعلم لهيرمان ، إضافة إلى عقد مقابلة شفوية مع طالبات المجموعة التجريبية. وأظهرت نتائج تحليل التباين المصاحب(ANCOVA) وجود فرق دال إحصائيا بين متوسطات علامات الطالبات على اختبار التحصيل البعدي لصالح أفراد المجموعة التجريبية، ولم يوجد فرق يعزى للتفاعل بين الطريقة المستخدمة في التدريس ونمط التعلم. وکشفت المقابلة عن تکون توجهات إيجابية لدى الطالبات نحو استخدام استراتيجية V-Shape في التعلم. وفي ضوء هذه النتائج أوصى البحث على استخدام استراتيجية V-Shapeفي تدريس مقرر اللغة الانجليزية لما لها من دور في رفع التحصيل الأکاديمي لدى طالبات الصف الثاني المتوسط Abstract This study aimed to examine the effect of V-Shape strategy on academic achievement among second grade students at female section with different learning styles according to Herman’s model, and clarify their perspective on the use of this strategy in learning. The sample consists of (68) students from Khadija bent Khuwaylid preparatory school for Girls in Zulfi, Saudi Arabia, where the sample studied the second unit of English languag e book. It was divided into twogroups(experimental and control group.( To achieve the aims of this study, the reseracher prepared an English exam, and used Herrman’s learning styles questionnaire, in addition to conduct an oral interview with the students in the experimental group.The results of analysis of variance (ANCOVA) showed difference of a statistically significant between the mean of Student’s degree in the post test for the experimental group, and there was no difference to the interaction between the method used in teaching and learning style. Interview revealed positive orientations among students towards the use of V-Shape strategy in learning. According to these results the study recommended using the V-Shape strategy in teaching English language because of its role in raising academic achievement among second preparatory students.

The State Matura exam in Croatia: How argumentative essay as an integral part of the Matura Higher English exam improved students’ foreign language literacy

The purpose of this article is to enrich the EFL teacher’s understanding of the development of educational standards in Croatia with the special focus on Secondary School Leaving Examination the so called State Matura. The external examinations are a widespread phenomenon which has also influenced Croatian educational system. This new type of assessment, which has been used for over a decade now has positively influenced the language competence of the students especially in reading and writing. Henceforth the argumentative essay, which is a crucial part of the English Matura exam at the higher level, has in great part contributed to such positive changes which were also documentd in the Reports issued by the Croatian Center for External Evaluation of Education, whose role is to govern the whole examination process and in the end to subject the tests and its items to psychometric analyses. Statistical data, rating scales and a sample essay included in this article are of great help in other to demonstrate the positive role the argumentative essay plays at the Matura exam and later at a university level .A study which also speaks in favour of this fact is the study conducted by R.M.Helms, in the USA (2008) which stresses the importance of the writing component of the SAT tests as predictors of college grades. Bearing in mind everything mentioned so far a lot of challenges still lie ahed, but the Croatian educational system will for sure yield even more promising results in the future.