Málfríður - 15.11.1993, Síða 13

conventions, as far as they are
manifest in the communicative
behavior of the members of the
other society. The orientation in
foreign language learning is a
domain of a slightly different
order. Here language learning is
considered in its broad educa-
tional context. Learners are
expected to have insight into
their own objectives, to know
which procedures and aids will
contribute to achieve those
objectives and to assess their
progress in foreign language
acquisition. In doing so, they
relate the learning of foreign lan-
guages to their own needs and
experiences.
4. Assessment in basic
education
The Basic Education bill
puts forward some global
remarks about evaluation. The
attainment of the objectives
has to be assessed by means
of national tests, provided by
the Minister of Education. So
there will be no final examina-
tions as is usual at the end of
secondary education. Schools
are relatively free to determine
the time at which the tests are
taken by their pupils. They are
also free to decide whether
pupils have succeeded in
achieving the educational tar-
gets, but they are obliged to
administer at least the tests
provided by public authority.
Thus the government fullfills
its duty of guaranteeing the
quality of education.
Since 1990 Cito, the national
instiute of educational measure-
ment, is preparing the testing
part of Basic education. Cito has
put forward the outlines of a flex-
ible and school-centered evalua-
tion system. A system, which dis-
turbs the school routine as little
as possible and fits into daily
school life. Those characteristics
impose certain constraints on
test development. The taking of a
test or a part of a test should not
depass the period of a regular
lesson, for instance. However,
the ultimate decision on the as-
sessment system is to be taken
by politicians and they have not
done that yet. In spite of the poli-
tical problems a reform in edu-
cation always enhances, for pro-
fessional test constructors like
those who work at Cito it means
a new challenge to seek for ap-
propriate forms to assess the
objectives of Basic education.
There is no tradition with all its
fixed rules and constraining
habits, as is the case with final
examinations in the Dutch educa-
tional system.
5. How to test the
objectives?
Hitherto experimental tests
have been developed for the fif-
teen different subject matters of
Basic education, including
French, German and English.
When objectives have been for-
mulated under the guidance of a
chairman like Jan van Ek, it is not
surprising that the specific
objectives for foreign languages
are derived from the commu-
nicative ability. For at least ten
years now a lot of testing has
been going on inspired by the
concept of communicative com-
petence. So the experimental lan-
guage tests do not come out of
nowhere. Test construction is
concentrated on the domain of
the communicative language
ability and within that domain on
the four skills. These experimen-
tal tests have several functions:
- they are the operationalisa-
tion of the specific objec-
tives, which are formulated
at a so called intermediate
level of abstraction. This
operationalisation facilitates
communication about edu-
cational goals between those
who are involved in educa-
tion. Furthermore, it enables
legitimation by experts of the
test constructor's interpreta-
tion of those objectives.
- They illustrate the objectives
in the most concrete way and
can thus play a role in the
introduction of Basic educa-
tion. They clarify to teachers
what targets they have to
attain with their pupils at the
end of Basic education.
- They can help in getting in-
formation on the distance
between the level that is
aimed at and the real level of
Basic education. Up until
now the level is still a paper
one; are pupils really able to
attain these targets after
some 240 hours of courses in
a foreign language? This has
to be verified by empirical
data, the experimental tests
are the instruments to gather
those data.
Reading skills
Tests of reading have been
developed for French, German
and English. They consist of
about 25 open and closed ques-
tions about a number of authen-
tic texts like leaflets, news
items, signs, announcements,
advertisement etc. Most of the
texts are rather short, one is a
little longer and comes from a
magazine. Only one, sometimes
two or three questions are ask-
ed on the short texts'; between
seven and ten questions are
asked on the long texts. Those
questions aim to represent
objectives like 'identifying rele-
vant information in functional
texts', 'comparing information
and drawing conclusions' and
'understanding the essence of
texts'. The German and the
French test have been pretested
on a small scale. This pretest
was meant to give answers on
questions about the level of
Basic education and about the
degree of difficulty for the dif-
ferent groups of participants,
this is students of lower voca-
tional education, junior school,
senior education and pre uni-
versity education. Results are
such that the idea of a one and
unique test for this very mixed
abilty group is not to be reject-
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