Suchergebnisse

IN THE NAME OF OBJECTIVITY AND SCIENCE, THE TESTING ENTERPRISE HAS LED TEACHERS AND PARENTS TO DISTRUST THEIR ABILITY TO KNOW THEIR OWN CHILDREN; THIS IS THE GREATEST DISSERVICE IT HAS DONE US. NOTHING IS MORE HARMFUL TO A GOOD EDUCATION THAN THIS WITHERING AWAY OF THE EXPECTATION THAT IT TAKES HUMAN BEINGS TO MAKE JUDGMENTS. THE TASK OF RETURNING TESTING TO ITS PROPER PLACE WILL BE DIFFICULT.

Although there is a growing body of research indicating that anxiety relates to foreign language learning, the correlation between anxiety and learners' performance on a high-stakes testing context has not been fully explored. To date, studies investigating the relationship between test-taking anxiety and test-takers' performance are not only limited in number, but also partial in nature as most of them only looked at one aspect of test-takers performance, i.e. listening, speaking, or writing performance only. This study is aimed at investigating the relationship between test-taking anxiety and test-takers' performance with a holistic view, taking into account the test-takers' performance on the listening, reading, speaking, and writing modules of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS™) test. The participants in this study were 15 government officials taking an IELTS test preparation program. Two instruments were utilized in this study: (1) a set of test-taking anxiety questionnaire items to measure the level of anxiety and, (2) the official IELTS™ test to measure test-takers' performance. The results indicated that there was a weak to moderate correlation between test-taking anxiety and the test-takers' performance across different modules of the IELTS test. These results corroborate the findings from previous studies.

test…

It is often thought, or presupposed, that investigative tests done for evaluative purposes should be symmetrical—that is, they should be equally capable of giving positive and negative results. This is an error in the logic of evaluation, and it arises from confusion between the asymmetrical ability of a test to yield information and its propensity to yield biased information. Although 'asymmetrical' does connote one-sidedness and we often use 'one-sided' to mean biased, we can and should use the terms more carefully. Some tests can only yield information about the faults of a program (or product, or person, etc.)—or only about its virtues—while others can yield one of these more reliably than the other, and yet others are symmetrical in their treatment of merits and demerits. All of them gather relevant information for evaluative purposes, and one cannot conclude that any of them are biased simply because they are asymmetrical. The point is important because in many situations, one may only have access to asymmetrical tests and this does not support the claim of a biased approach as long as there is more than one test in the battery used to evaluate, and one test's asymmetry is balanced out by the other test(s).