V Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2013

As President Nursultan Nazarbayev has highlighted in his Appeal to the people of Kazakhstan, we, future educators, language teachers should bring up generation of creative young people who have high standard of knowledge and fluently speak the state language, the language of interethnic communication and one or more foreign languages. [1] This strategic line was emphasized in the governmental program of Trinity of languages.

According to the new ―Program of development of education in the Republic of Kazakhstan for the period of 2011-2020‖ the general secondary education in the country will be reformed as 12 year instruction with a bias to professional training of high school students in order to inculcate in them skills and habits of independent work and correct choice of future profession. [2] The school plans, in accordance with this program, have extended hours of teaching foreign languages at schools. To make the educational process effective we should not only give the students the basic data on grammar material and vocabulary peculiarities of the target language. The whole material of the school subjects in languages should be rearranged and be more informative and cognitive. In order to reach the educational aims we should thoroughly select the information.

In the Republic of Kazakhstan the process of education of the spiritual and physically developed generation is a problem of national importance.

The changes in political and economic spheres of life in the Republic, the output on international level in area of the formation, science and cultures raise need of lifting the status of foreign languages. The realization of the social order requires the revision of the educational system, development of the new efficient forms, methods and facilities of education. One of the most important sides to new educational ideology is a directivity on cultural approach – ―a way of person’s formation in culture‖. The modern theories on purpose and problem of the formation come from necessity to provide the process humanization, which enables to possess the achievements of world and domestic culture, define their own outlook to positions and spiritual value.

The criteria-estimated base creation of national monitoring of quality of continuous formation of Republic Kazakhstan educational system are connected with the analysis of modern requirements and the criteria that were shown by international and Kazakhstan communities. It is caused by integration processes in united educational space.

Within the framework of Bolon process and to integrations of the Kazakhstan school in the European educational space for the last years the greater attention is given to the competent approach and to the development of pupils’ speech competency during the process of the education.

The New Educational paradigm founded on interaction of the cultures, helps to understand the nature and essence of the relations between cultures and select that general that unites them.

The collective obligation on provision of the rights on high quality education to 2015 was accepted in 2000 on the World-wide Educational Forum in Dakar.

According to the articles of the Law of Education adopted in 1999 and then in 2007, the main principles of a state policy in the field of formation are

• equality of the rights of all on reception of qualitative formation;

• priority of developments of an education system;

• secular, humanistic and developing character of formation, a priority of civil values, lives and health of the person, free development of the person;

• respect of the rights and freedom of the person;

• stimulation of erudition of the person and development of endowments;

• a continuity of process of the formation providing continuity of its levels;

• unity of training and education [1,2].

The special attention in comparative international researches of secondary education quality is given to pupils’ understanding of the basic concepts, the skill to use their knowledge in various situations. And tests serve as measuring instruments in the given researches.

Quoting S. Krashen, and some other educators and researchers we indicated the classroom assessment techniques such as:

Nonverbal Responses: This technique is used at the early stages of learning. These tasks require simple directions to carry out. At a later stage, pupils may perform hands-on tasks.

Oral Interview: Visual cues can be used in oral interviews at the early stages of acquisition. Thus a pupil may be asked to choose pictures to talk about, and the teacher’s role is to guide the pupil by liking questions that require the use of related vocabulary.

Role-play: This informal assessment technique combines oral performance and physical activity. Children of all ages feel comfortable and motivated, especially when the activity lends itself to cooperative learning and is seen as a fun way of learning.

Written Narratives: The assessment could be achieved through purposeful, authentic tasks, such as writing letters to friends, writing letters to favorite television program characters, and writing and responding to invitations.

Presentations: Presentations are important for assessment because they can provide a com-prehensive record of pupils’ abilities in both oral and written performance. They give the teacher some insights into pupil’s interests, work habits, and organizational abilities. Presentations cover a wide range of meaningful activities, including poetry readings, plays, role-plays, dramatizations, and interviews.

Pupil-Teacher Conferences: Conferences and interviews provide opportunities for one-on-one interactions where the teacher can learn about a pupil’s communicative abilities, emotional and social well-being, attention span, attitudes, pace of learning, and strengths and weaknesses [13].

Self-Assessment: Young learners may also participate in self-assessment.

Dialogue Journals: These journals are interactive in nature; they take the form of an ongoing written dialogue between teacher and pupil. Dialogue journals have proven effective and enjoyable for pupils regardless of their level of proficiency. They are informal and provide a means of free, uncensored expression, enabling pupils to write without worrying about being corrected.

Peer and Group Assessment: Pupils can write evaluative, encouraging notes for each member of their team emphasizing their positive contribution to team work. The role of the teacher would be to provide guidance, to explain to the pupils what they have to evaluate in one another’s work, and to helpthem identify and apply properly the evaluation criteria. At the end of group tasks, if necessary, the

teacher can give each pupil a test to check their individual performance.

Pupil Portfolios: The concept of portfolio was borrowed from the field of fine arts where portfolios are used to display the best samples of an artist’s work [3]. The purpose of a portfolio in the context of language teaching is to demonstrate the extent of a pupil’s communicative competence in the target language through samples of oral and written work [3].

It takes many hours of study and practice to acquire a reasonable level of proficiency in a foreign language. This represents a substantial investment for any organization considering the selection of people for language training. It would therefore be useful to predict with reasonable accuracy to what extent an individual who had never studied a language before would benefit from attending a language course. Businesses often underestimate how long it takes to acquire a reasonable level of proficiency in a foreign language. The Council of Europe has calculated, for example, that itrequires 180-200 learning hours to achieve the A2 level and 375-400 hours to achieve Bl level with the Common European Framework (CEF) scheme, B1 being the level at which the learner begins to communicate with a certain degree of confidence.

Computer-based exercises and tests often take the same kind of format. The essential difference between an exercise and a test is the purpose to which it is put. An exercise usually offers instant feedback to the learner and an opportunity to correct any errors that are made, whereas a test may offer little feedback to the learner apart from a raw score at the end of the test, or no feedback at all, e.g. where the results of the test might be stored for analysis by a teacher or examination body. Exercises are usually designed to offer the learner practice in specific areas and to motivate and encourage, whereas tests are usually designed to assess the learner's progress in specific areas, i.e. for self-assessment purposes, for the teacher or for an examination body. But sometimes these distinctions become blurred.

The main kinds of tests include:

Placement tests: These are designed mainly to sort pupils into teaching groups so that they are approximately at the same level when they join the group. Placement tests may take the form of adaptive tests.

Diagnostic tests: These are designed to enable the learner or teacher to identify specific strengths and weaknesses so that remedial action can be take. Diagnostic tests may take the form of adaptive tests.

Achievement / attainment tests: These are usually more formal, designed to show mastery of a

particular syllabus rather than as a means of motivating the learner or reinforcing specific language skills.

Proficiency tests: These are designed to measure learner's achievements in relation to a specific task which they are later required to perform, e.g. follow a university course delivered in language other than their mother tongue. Proficiency tests do not normally take account of any particular syllabus that has been followed. The driving test is a typical example of a proficiency test, i.e. it assesses whether you are competent to be in control of a car on public highways.

Aptitude tests: Such tests aim to predict how a pupil might perform in a specific subject or specific areas of a subject.

Success in learning a foreign language depends on a number of basic aptitudes, for example: auditory, linguistic, memory.

But factors other than aptitude often make a successful linguist, e.g. attitude to learning, a good learning style, interpersonal communication skills, intercultural competence, etc.

We can observe Self-Assessment techniques, such as

 Global self-assessment

 Self-marking instruments

 Data-driven global assessments Portfolios

 Pre- and post-course writing

So, briefly resuming we can say that there are varieties of tests to control the knowledge and skills of students. One can choose the necessary one according to the aims of the educational process.

References:

1. Appeal of the President N.Nazarbayev to Kazakhstani people. January, 28, 2011

2. Program on Development of Education in the Republic of Kazakhstan for the period of 2011-2020

3. Krashen, Stephen D. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Prentice-Hall International, 1987. – 290 р.

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