Paving the way for English Language proficiency in Palestine: the role of standardized assessment tools in making evidence-based decisions in education and employment.

Steven Keller

Country Director

AMIDEAST

In cooperation with:

Educational Testing Service (ETS) Global and AMRA Information Technology

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What does a global language assessment and psychometric testing authority have to say on the subject?

- ETS Research Report Series Volume 2016, Issue 1 - June 2016

“Language proficiency assessments are used for many different purposes, and these purposes differ as to what aspects of language proficiency are assessed, what decisions need to be made about students or programs, whether assessment results are to be used locally or in a broader context, how much precision is needed in reporting the results, and what level of test security is appropriate. Further, assessment methods can differ substantially with respect to the kinds of evidence they provide about language skills, how reliable they are, what kinds of technology they require, and how much time they demand of students and teachers.”

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Some Types of Assessments – Part 1 Formative Assessment

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning.

More specifically, formative assessments:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work

• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

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Some Types of Assessments – Part 2Summative Assessment

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit or period by comparing it against some standard or benchmark, such as the CEFR for language proficiency assessment.

Summative assessments are often high stakes, which means that they have a high point value or are used as the basis for admission to a university program or a new job or a professional training or certification.

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

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As teaching and learning increasingly moves online, assessment is also catching up and following suit - TOEFL

• Paper-based TOEFL became the Internet-based TOEFL, or iBT

• Measures ability to use and understand English at the university level and evaluates how well students combine listening, reading, speaking and writing skills to perform academic tasks

• In addition to U.S. universities, all Canadian universities accept the TOEFL, along with 164 institutions in Australia and 380 in the U.K.

• Practice and preparation for this high stakes has also moved online. TOEFL’s official online practice test uses actual TOEFL iBT questions, follows full-length test format and provides students with same-day score results using the TOEFL iBT scale.

• TOEFL preparation tutorial coursework is now offered online, with a personal learning path that pulls from approximately 500 activities and allows up to 80 hours of learning, with speech recognition technology, automated scoring of exercises and post-tests.

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As teaching and learning increasingly moves online, assessment is also catching up and following suit - TOEIC

• Paper-based Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) is now available in an online, secure, internet-based format.

• Global English certification recognized by nearly 14,000 organizations and businesses in 150 countries.

• As with the TOEFL, preparation and practice for the TOEIC is now possible via an online TOEIC prep course involving over 1,000 actual TOEIC questions and real-life workplace scenarios covering listening, reading, grammar, and speaking via three progressive modules, followed by an automated score report with an assessment of strengths and weaknesses.

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How can educational institutions in Palestine use these kinds of standardized assessment tools to guide their decision-making?

How can employers in Palestine use standardized English language assessment tools to guide their decision-making?

Brief interactive discussion.

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Stay tuned for more!

AMIDEAST, AMRA, and ETS Global are working with an evaluation specialist in the education field in Palestine to design a survey of stakeholders the education and employment sectors to get input on challenges and issues related to English language proficiency in Palestine.

We will share and discuss the results at a solution oriented workshop later this year that delves more deeply into some of what we’ve touched on today during this brief presentation.

We look forward to broad input into the survey and robust participation in the workshop when the time comes.

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Thank you!

Any questions?