Letters to KOTESOL: 2011 December

Language Education and Technology (LET Journal), 2022

As with all forms of testing, language testing performs a variety of roles, from representing levels of performance to social gatekeeping functions (McNamara, 2000). This paper will present a summative test for a specific group of learners in context. Moreover, the paper will provide the justification behind the choices made in item and task selection for the test. Hughes (2003) presents essential procedural guidelines for test construction, the first of which notes that the test purpose and type must be clearly defined. The test presented in this paper was an achievement test designed for first year Japanese polytechnic students in Kyoto, Japan, aged 18-20 who were studying English as either an elective subject or as a mandatory component of their first-year studies. The test contains four sections: Listening, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Writing. The test items are intended to expand, both in theme and content, on textbook and classroom activities; thus making them familiar enough to students to reduce test day anxiety, but challenging enough to make a valid assessment.

REKA ELKOMIKA: Jurnal Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is a type of language test of which results are often used as a reference for new student admission in Universities. However, this test is not included in the English language learning curriculum at the secondary level so high school students are not familiar with it. Therefore, this community service activity aims at introducing the test to middle-level students so that they have knowledge and are familiar with the types of questions tested in this test. To determine the progress of students' knowledge and abilities, pre and post-tests were conducted, and the result was the improvement of the scores indicating that the learning approach chosen in this activity is in accordance with the objective of the training. In addition, a simple information system for test assessment was created using Microsoft Excel. This information system helps record student grades and makes it easier to convert TOEFL scores.

INOVISH JOURNAL

In the era of industry 4.0, most of human’s activities cannot be separated from digitalization. The digitalization has collaborated with the educational institution. The Language Centre of Politeknik Negeri Bengkalis usually holds a TOEIC test (online and offline) to fulfill the industrial world in preparing qualified alumni. The TOEIC instructor or lecturer used a TOEIC application while teaching in TOEIC intensive class where it is a preparation class for the students. This study investigated the problem faced by the students during listening through application which is called TOEIC Test Prep in learning TOEIC materials in the TOEIC intensive class and also investigated the challenges faced by them during the use of application. The participants of the study were 43 non-English majoring students (the fifth semester) of State Polytechnique of Bengkalis. The study used questionnaires to collect the data and the data were analyzed based on three categories; students’ background, th...

The TOEFL is an increasingly important test in the Asian EFL context. Learners who wish to study abroad realize the importance of the test and garnering a high score on it. This paper will outline the specific learning strategies employed in a recent TOEFL preparation program in Japan. It will delineate the specific strategies that can be used to improve learner abilities on the test and how scores can be dramatically improved through the use of language learning strategies. Further, through the use of these strategies, learner satisfaction with TOEFL preparation courses can also be greatly increased. This paper will then outline the results of a recent TOEFL preparation program-in which there were 116 participants-that used such strategies with great success. Finally, the results have pedagogical implications for teachers and learners alike: a well-constructed TOEFL preparation program can successfully prepare learners for the test, thus increasing their satisfaction with the methods employed in such a course.

sadlier-oxford.com

first-grade teacher is working with a small group of students. She begins a phonics lesson by talking about word families the students have been learning, such as ap, an, and ag. She then introduces a new book and completes a picture walk with the students. The teacher explains that the book has several words from the at word family, including the words cat and hat in the title. As she reads the book aloud, she asks the children to be detectives and to find words with the phonogram at. After the read-aloud, the class discusses the story. The teacher gives each child a magnetic board, an at chunk in magnetic letters, and magnetic consonants. She then asks the students to build at words on their boards. When they finish, she asks the children to tell her the words they have made. Zach says "bat," Crystal says "pat," and Julio says "sat." Pleased with their responses, the teacher asks the children to select an at word and make up a sentence using it. The children dictate their sentences aloud, and she writes them on sentence strips. She then cuts the sentence strips into individual words so the children can work in pairs to re-sequence the sentences for practice. She continues the lesson by asking the students to complete a phonics practice page that features common short a phonograms, including many at words.

KOTESOL proceedings: The Second Pan …, 1999

The vision of the conference (actually the second in a series of four conferences) was to bring together English teaching professionals from all over Asia to share their teaching experiences their research, and to see if it was possible to define an Asian context for teaching English. Over 220 presentations from Korea, Japan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom, addressed both practical and theoretical aspects of English language teaching in Asia. A great many of the presentations focused on collaborative research, from how to start an action research project to the actual results and observations of teachers who had collaborated cross-culturally. Of special note were several research projects between teachers in Japan and Thailand that started at PAC1 held in Thailand in January, 1997. PAC2 gave ELT professionals the same opportunity to find teachers from other countries who shared similar concerns, and sparked a number of collaborative action-research projects. Though the results of the action research projects started at PAC2 may not be available until PAC3 (Japan, November, 2001) or PAC4 (Taiwan, November, 2003), some of the articles in this conference proceedings are representative of the kind of collaborative research the PAC series serves to foster.

2010

According to the goals of the Ministry of Education regarding the teaching of English in the Chilean school system, the TOEIC Bridge will be the tool to assess the level of English in high school students as part of the system that measures the quality of education: SIMCE. Given the importance of this challenge, this research called "How to Teach Receptive Skills Based on the TOEIC Bridge Test" has the aim of providing didactic and motivating strategies and tips to help both teachers and students in the process of teaching and learning of reading and listening comprehension which are the two main skills that this test is aimed to measure. It is hoped that these resources are helpful for students in order to have successful results in the TOEIC Bridge test and perform well in common everyday communicative situations.

P hon e m e s are the smallest units in the spoken language, with English containing approximately 41 phonemes (Ehri & Nunes, 2002).

Part III of the TOEIC Bridge requires candidates to listen to a short conversation and then answer a written multiple-choice question about it. A commonly-taught test-taking strategy for this part of the TOEIC is for test-takers to read the question and answer choices before listening to the conversation so as to know what to listen for, rather than trying to recall what had been heard and attempting to answer the question post-listening (Trew, 2008). The current study aims to examine the effectiveness of this approach to Part III of the TOEIC Bridge in two ways: firstly by comparing the gains of students who had and hadn't received this particular strategy instruction, and also examining the effect of forcing the strategy to be used. The study was carried out with 148 Japanese university students of low English proficiency with TOEIC Bridge scores between 90 and 140. Results seem to indicate that teaching this strategy to students at this level does not significantly improve scores, and may, in fact, hinder their performance.

This article discusses the format for the speaking exam developed for the School of Foreign Languages at a Turkish university. The introduction and literature review provide the rationale and arguments for the suggested changes to an existing format. The areas for review and redesigning are: the structure of the exam, assessment rubric, exam questions, and supporting manual for assessors and interlocutors. Each area is considered from the standpoint of best practices in speaking skills assessment and the ways those practices should be utilized in a particular learning community. A detailed description of the procedures, logistics, and sample questions follows.