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BACHWASH & FAIRNESS IN EXAMINATIONS AND EVALUATION(Both Formal and In-house Designed Tests)

Manizales – May 2011Martin Horkley

English Language & Evaluation Consultant.

Backwash or Washback; it’s the direct or indirect effect of examinations onteaching methods.

Negative Backwash:- Test content and test techniques are in variance with course objectives.

i.e. Preparing for a multiple choice test won’t have space for developingall skills (writing)

Positive Backwash:- Test content and test techniques are in line to the objectives of the

course.

Exam Preparation.- Overt: “Doing a lot of past papers or adapting the teaching methods usedin class, as preparation for an exam” Vs.

- Convert:

Practice Tests: to practice the skills needed for the real examinations.Objective: to practice different item types of the future examination. Benefits:build Ss confident exam skills. Benefit to school: improve chances of success informal exams and improve statistics. Implications in the classrooms: grades arenot formally assessed.

Mock Tests: matched to the associated proficiency examination.

“Many teachers are tapped in an examination preparation cycle wherecommunicative and humanistic methodologies are luxuries that teachers cannotafford” “Abuse of testing occurs when it is not the final stage learning, but is thebeginning, middle, and end of the whole process” “Testing may be a short cut to extrinsic motivation; BUT overuse of testing is theteacher’s failure to make intrinsic motivation work and w ill demotivate thelearner” “Classroom arrangement can send a power message”

Backwash – The apparent imbalancePositive backwash:

- Greater awareness of the exams and the conditions.- Independent evaluation tool for Ss levels and the syllabus.- Validation that things are going well.- Develop skills that have a wider use for Ss now and the future.- Offers a common goal for both Ss and T.Negative backwash:- Stressing.- Grading.- Mock tests need More than 1 lesson.- Demostrate general weakness.

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- Ts and Ss associate testing with passing or failing, and the negativeconsequence.

Developing Grading Skills.

Grading is more than just checking the answer with the answer sheet. Surface or content errors? Is spelling important? it depends to what’s important. How are the errors graded? You don’t count errors. You assess the

impact of the error. Objective and subjective grading. (Move from Subjective grading to

Objective grading) Speaking and writing.How can you manage this? Teachers’ handbooks. Online support.

Experience – Mocks→

“Real” Annual Teacher Training

Dangers of only focusing on the exam.- Teacher complacency

“My Ss are good enough – let’s play” - If you teach the exam, the Ss pass or fail.- Skills built up over the shorter term are more likely forgotten.- The institution stagnates and doesn’t move forward.

Build sub-skill development for exams from the lowest level.

Developing cognitive thinking strategies. Develop cross-curricular skills. Work as a bigger team – All Ts stressing good writing skills to benefit al

subjects. Ss will have useful skills that they can use in a wider variety of situations

in the future. Skills will last longer as they were developed in a longer period of time.

Sub-skills:- For exam practice; Infer attitude Understand sentence order Understanding instructions Recognize the features of connected speech Identify specific information Differentiate the message from distracters

Activity Draw the 10 boxes then give tasks. (Look at picture)

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Are exam sub-skills so different from the general sub-skills we ned in our dailylives?

- In reading Ss need to be able to: To read instructions To read the questions

To extract the salient points from a text To assess mood in a text To understand and use paragraphs to aid reading

So, What are we saying?- You want your Ss to write a letter of complaint… What do they need to know to be able to do this effectively?

Produce the correct format Choose appropriate lexis and collocations Appropriate grammar Expressions Organizational choice and content Paragraphing, punctuation and capitalization

Within the syllabus, how are we developing these sub-skills from an earlystage?

Why from an early stage? They learn to identify those sub-skills from dayone.

Let’s think again about exam practice;

- Sub-skills development is not practice

- Even multiple choice requires processes of: Critical thinking

Creating beneficial backwash.

In the syllabus:- Increase Ss motivation and confidence by:

Buildiong general skills in communication Combining language sub-skills and those needed for particular

examination tasks type Planning over

In the classroom:- Like pronunciation → Exam preparation- Build on cooperative work by encouraging sharing

Establish the idea of:o Test as a group activity – negotiating answerso Justifying and supporting sub-skill development

- Ensure smooth linking of the stages of the lessons

Examination preparation is not just practice;How can we start preparing IELTS / FCE at elementary level?

- Use of process writing or genre analysis

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