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Full-Text Articles in Education
Experimenting With Uncertainty: Essays In Honour Of Alan Davies
Experimenting With Uncertainty: Essays In Honour Of Alan Davies
Dr Tom Lumley
This festschrift brings together 28 invited papers surveying the state of the art in language testing from a perspective which combines technical and broader applied linguistics insights. The papers cover issues ranging from construct definition to the design and applications of language tests, including their importance as a means of exploring larger issues in language teaching, language learning and language policy. The volume locates work in language testing in a context of social, political and ethical issues at a time when testing is increasingly expected to be publicly accountable
The Process Of The Assessment Of Writing Performance : The Rater's Perspective, Tom Lumley
The Process Of The Assessment Of Writing Performance : The Rater's Perspective, Tom Lumley
Dr Tom Lumley
This study investigates the process of rating texts written by adult ESL learners. Four experienced raters provided think-aloud protocols describing the rating process for a set of 24 texts. The think-aloud data allowed analysis of the sequence of rating, raters' interpretations of the scoring categories, and difficulties raters faced. The study reveals the complexity of the rating process, whereby raters struggle to resolve a tension between the wordings (or rules) of the rating scale and their complex, initial, intuitive impression of the text. Rating requires training to provide reliable measurement. The study also demonstrates that caution is needed in interpreting …