Catering to assessment needs of students of English - call to the rescue?

• Authors: Anita Buczek-Zawiła

Abstracts

EN

The study focuses on the process of assessing (a micro-skill) goal attainment in EFL pronunciation course via measures which can foster different students’ attitudes and self-perceptions. Standard (pen-and-paper) tests offer immediate evidence of success but they put heavy demands on students’ cognitive, performance and stress-controlling skills. CALL-related techniques can be used as supplementary ones, even if technically assessing different sub-skills, Kahoot or Moodle quizzes can complement and re-orientate the assessment as well as the learning processes. To investigate the impact of the diverse assessment measures a small-scale research was conducted among Year 1 students of the English Department at the Pedagogical University in Kraków. They are participants in a 90-hours-a-year pronunciation course, where one of the components involves mastering transcribing skills. The specific element of the course evaluated by standard and CALL-related measures in the study were the phonetic variants of the -es and -ed endings in English. Through analysis of test scores, coupled with the ideas obtained via semi-structured interviews, the study hoped to verify the claim that matters such as student comfort, instant individual feedback and personal safety are most efficiently handled by the Moodle quizzes. Apart from providing well-balanced scores, they offer the least-threatening, stress-free environments for learning and assessment, thus developing students’ self-monitoring their progress.

Keywords

EN

assessment; test anxiety; pronunciation instruction; pen-and-paper tests; computer-based tests

• Publisher: IATEFL Poland Computer Special Interest Group & University of Nicosia
• Journal: Teaching English with Technology
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 38-65

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Anita Buczek-Zawiła

• Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland

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Identifiers

Biblioteka Nauki

2085226