This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (C... more This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (CAT) for English. The early identification of students with weak L2 English proficiency is of critical importance in university settings that have compulsory English language course graduation requirements. The most efficient means of diagnosing the L2 English ability of incoming students is by means of a computer-based test since such evaluation can be administered quickly, automatically corrected, and the outcome known as soon as the test is completed. While the option of using a commercial CAT is available to institutions with the ability to pay substantial annual fees, or the means of passing these expenses on to their students, language instructors without these resources can only avail themselves of the advantages of CAT evaluation by creating their own tests. As is demonstrated by the E-CAT project described in this paper, this is a viable alternative even for those lacking any computer programing expertise. However, language teaching experience and testing expertise are critical to such an undertaking, which requires considerable effort and, above all, collaborative teamwork to succeed. A number of practical skills are also required. Firstly, the operation of a CAT authoring programme must be learned. Once this is done, test makers must master the art of creating a question database and assigning difficulty levels to test items. Lastly, if multimedia resources are to be exploited in a CAT, test creators need to be able to locate suitable copyright-free resources and re-edit them as needed.
CALL communities and culture – short papers from EUROCALL 2016, 2016
The purpose of this presentation is to show how instructional technology can be exploited to effe... more The purpose of this presentation is to show how instructional technology can be exploited to effectively integrate Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) 'Can Do' performance objectives (Council of Europe, 2001) into the syllabus and assessment of an advanced (B2) level course. The particular course that will be used for purposes of demonstration is English for Rehabilitation, an English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) course offered at the Cyprus University of Technology. It is a two-semester compulsory subject for first-year students majoring in Rehabilitation Sciences, a Health Faculty discipline. The ultimate goal of the course is to increase students' linguistic competence to allow them to function professionally in English as independent learners in all four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. It will be shown how Internet resources, in particular YouTube and various Google applications (Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Scholar, Google Slides, Hangouts) are used to provide and organise online content as well as to support students in the production of written and oral materials based on discipline-specific input.
To further explore the correlation between courses, university culture revision of the scheme pro... more To further explore the correlation between courses, university culture revision of the scheme provides the basis of quantitative analysis, through the data mining method for correlation analysis of student course grades, the improved Apriori algorithm is performance data in the transaction database is out now is set to 1, did not appear to be set to 0, forming a similar Boolean or binary data, using a binary "and operation" of the to join and prune. Verified by concrete examples show that the method can save the scan time and storage space, and the cultivation scheme formulation has certain directive significance.
This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (C... more This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (CAT) for English. The early identification of students with weak L2 English proficiency is of critical importance in university settings that have compulsory English language course graduation requirements. The most efficient means of diagnosing the L2 English ability of incoming students is by means of a computer-based test since such evaluation can be administered quickly, automatically corrected, and the outcome known as soon as the test is completed. While the option of using a commercial CAT is available to institutions with the ability to pay substantial annual fees, or the means of passing these expenses on to their students, language instructors without these resources can only avail themselves of the advantages of CAT evaluation by creating their own tests. As is demonstrated by the E-CAT project described in this paper, this is a viable alternative even for those lacking any computer programing expertise. However, language teaching experience and testing expertise are critical to such an undertaking, which requires considerable effort and, above all, collaborative teamwork to succeed. A number of practical skills are also required. Firstly, the operation of a CAT authoring programme must be learned. Once this is done, test makers must master the art of creating a question database and assigning difficulty levels to test items. Lastly, if multimedia resources are to be exploited in a CAT, test creators need to be able to locate suitable copyright-free resources and re-edit them as needed.
This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (C... more This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (CAT) for English. The early identification of students with weak L2 English proficiency is of critical importance in university settings that have compulsory English language course graduation requirements. The most efficient means of diagnosing the L2 English ability of incoming students is by means of a computer-based test since such evaluation can be administered quickly, automatically corrected, and the outcome known as soon as the test is completed. While the option of using a commercial CAT is available to institutions with the ability to pay substantial annual fees, or the means of passing these expenses on to their students, language instructors without these resources can only avail themselves of the advantages of CAT evaluation by creating their own tests. As is demonstrated by the E-CAT project described in this paper, this is a viable alternative even for those lacking any computer programing expertise. However, language teaching experience and testing expertise are critical to such an undertaking, which requires considerable effort and, above all, collaborative teamwork to succeed. A number of practical skills are also required. Firstly, the operation of a CAT authoring programme must be learned. Once this is done, test makers must master the art of creating a question database and assigning difficulty levels to test items. Lastly, if multimedia resources are to be exploited in a CAT, test creators need to be able to locate suitable copyright-free resources and re-edit them as needed.
CALL communities and culture – short papers from EUROCALL 2016, 2016
The purpose of this presentation is to show how instructional technology can be exploited to effe... more The purpose of this presentation is to show how instructional technology can be exploited to effectively integrate Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) 'Can Do' performance objectives (Council of Europe, 2001) into the syllabus and assessment of an advanced (B2) level course. The particular course that will be used for purposes of demonstration is English for Rehabilitation, an English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) course offered at the Cyprus University of Technology. It is a two-semester compulsory subject for first-year students majoring in Rehabilitation Sciences, a Health Faculty discipline. The ultimate goal of the course is to increase students' linguistic competence to allow them to function professionally in English as independent learners in all four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. It will be shown how Internet resources, in particular YouTube and various Google applications (Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Scholar, Google Slides, Hangouts) are used to provide and organise online content as well as to support students in the production of written and oral materials based on discipline-specific input.
To further explore the correlation between courses, university culture revision of the scheme pro... more To further explore the correlation between courses, university culture revision of the scheme provides the basis of quantitative analysis, through the data mining method for correlation analysis of student course grades, the improved Apriori algorithm is performance data in the transaction database is out now is set to 1, did not appear to be set to 0, forming a similar Boolean or binary data, using a binary "and operation" of the to join and prune. Verified by concrete examples show that the method can save the scan time and storage space, and the cultivation scheme formulation has certain directive significance.
This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (C... more This paper describes the lessons learned in designing and implementing a computeradaptive test (CAT) for English. The early identification of students with weak L2 English proficiency is of critical importance in university settings that have compulsory English language course graduation requirements. The most efficient means of diagnosing the L2 English ability of incoming students is by means of a computer-based test since such evaluation can be administered quickly, automatically corrected, and the outcome known as soon as the test is completed. While the option of using a commercial CAT is available to institutions with the ability to pay substantial annual fees, or the means of passing these expenses on to their students, language instructors without these resources can only avail themselves of the advantages of CAT evaluation by creating their own tests. As is demonstrated by the E-CAT project described in this paper, this is a viable alternative even for those lacking any computer programing expertise. However, language teaching experience and testing expertise are critical to such an undertaking, which requires considerable effort and, above all, collaborative teamwork to succeed. A number of practical skills are also required. Firstly, the operation of a CAT authoring programme must be learned. Once this is done, test makers must master the art of creating a question database and assigning difficulty levels to test items. Lastly, if multimedia resources are to be exploited in a CAT, test creators need to be able to locate suitable copyright-free resources and re-edit them as needed.
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Papers by Maro Neophytou