Multilingual Situation in Russia: Foreign Language Teaching and Testing Tatyana Shkuratova Alexander...

Multilingual Situation in Russia: Foreign Language Teaching and

Testing

Tatyana ShkuratovaAlexander NoranovichSouthern Federal University, Russia

IATEFL TEASIG & UNISTRASI Conference, 23 November 2013, Siena, Italy

(taken from Plavskaya, 2012)

Federal State Statistics Service: http://www.gks.ru/

Teaching EFL in Russia

special bilingual classroom environment – artificial !

poor motivation – learning English for some hypothetical ‘special occasion’, which never comes

assessment is given little or no attention in professional training

4

Context:Tensions in the education system

Assessment

Teaching

ELT aims, content and

methods have changed

Assessment has largely remained

the same

(Anthony Green: TEMPUS ProSET All-Partners Meeting Presentation, February 2012, University of Bedfordshire, England)

TEMPUS ProSET SFedUPromoting Sustainable Excellence in Testing and Assessment of English

(ProSET):

to develop and introduce new curricula in testing and assessment of English, consistent with the EU Tuning system, that enhances transparent, international, educational standards in language learning.

To develop sustainable EU-Russia inter-university co-operation on testing and assessment of English, thereby defining new language learning standards and qualifications.

To elaborate career development courses for Bachelor, Master, Postgraduate students of philological faculties getting a degree in English and for Secondary School teachers to build up their professional knowledge in the area of language assessment.

Language testing/assessment:

A historical, educational, sociological, technological phenomenon –a good example of a ‘complex system’An ‘inherently interdisciplinary venture’Assessment ‘serves other disciplines, and vice versa’ and‘ the boundaries between theory and application are increasingly blurred’

Lynda Taylor: TEMPUS ProSET Training Session, February 2012, University of Bedfordshire, England

Teacher-textbook-student paradigm

1) studying and investigating foreign language culture indirectly2) ELL in the conditions of L1 dominance3) classroom environment:

communication situations: topics diversity number of participants

4) mastering the language – for its own sake5) language is acquired as a formal code

Characteristics of individuals

personal characteristics topical knowledge affective schemata language ability

(Bachman and Palmer , 2009:64)

To start with…

Age Sex Nationality Resident status Native language Level and type of general education Type and amount of preparation or prior experience with a

given test (Bachman and Palmer , 2009:65)

Specific test takers in mind?...SFedU Master students: 2012-13 acad.year

the English language aptitude

socio-psychological factors

ethnolinguistic factors

multilingual ability

Construct validity of a test

test items should be scrutinized in order to check whether certain groups of test takers are advantaged or disadvantaged by the test as a result of their cultural and educational background. The target test-taking group of this test is heterogeneous. Test takers speak a wide variety of first languages, have a wide variety of cultural and social backgrounds, and come from, or intend to study in, a wide variety of academic disciplines.

(John H.A.L. De Jong, Ying Zheng, 2011)

Taken from Bachman (1990, 87):Anthony Green: TEMPUS ProSET Training Session, February 2012,

University of Bedfordshire, England

SFedU: 159 master students of the FPhJ, 39 of them - immigrants and international students

Personal characteristics:Age: between 22 and 24Sex: male and femaleNationalities: Russian, Kazakh, Tatar, Mongolian, Chinese,

Turk, Ukrainian, Congo, ZimbabweImmigrant status: immigrants and international students

(28%)Native languages: varied (both Nostratic and non-Nostratic)Level and type of general education: BAType and amount of preparation or prior experience with a given test: none

Language Ability Checklist (taken from Bachman and Palmer, 2009: 77)

Component of language ability Comments

GRAM: Vocabulary

GRAM: Syntax

GRAM: Phonological/Graphological

TEXT: Cohesion

TEXT: Rhetorical organisation

FUNCT: Ideational

FUNCT: Manipulative

FUNCT: Heuristic

FUNCT: Imaginative

SOCIO: Dialect

SOCIO: Register

SOCIO: Naturalness

SOCIO: Cultural references and figurative language

META: Goal setting

META: Assessment

META: Planning

1) native Russian speakers

2) students of other nationalities

3) recent immigrants

4) international students

Nationality Population, thousands Language group

Russian 3800 Slavic/Indo-European

Armenian 111 Isolated Indo-European

Ukrainian 78 Slavic/Indo-European

Turk 36 Turkic/Altaic

Azerbaijan 18 Turkic/Altaic

Gipsy 17 Romani/ Indo-Iranian/Indo-European

Belorussian 16 Slavic/Indo-European

Tatar 14 Turkic/Altaic

Others 116 Indo-European, Northern-Caucasian, Non-Nostratic

Rostov Region, Southern Federal District, Russia

Cognitive demand at different levels

How well calibrated the cognitive processing demands made upon candidates are in the design of the tasks and items?

Is there a shift from tasks that focus on decoding to tasks that focus on meaning building from main ideas, to a text level representation to intertextual representation?

(Cyril Weir: TEMPUS ProSET All-Partners Meeting Presentation, February 2012, University of Bedfordshire, England)

Imprecise use of vocabulary items?Inaccurate cultural references?A very few structures? Word recognition Lexical access Syntactic parsing Establishing propositional meaning at the clause or sentence

level Inferencing Constructing a mental model

(Cyril Weir: TEMPUS ProSET All-Partners Meeting Presentation, February 2012, University of Bedfordshire, England)

Dianne Wall:

Laying a theoretically grounded foundation for the examination of English will also have a great impact on teaching and assessment in other foreign language such as German, French and Russian.

This will ensure a gradual increase in the number of professional teachers in schools and consequently the system of education will become more effective and able to satisfy the demands of society for educated people.

(EALTA Conference Presentation, May 2013, Istanbul, Turkey)

tshkuratova@prof-devcentre.com

noranovitch@sfedu.ru

Thank you