Cambridge Esol : Research Notes : Issue 34 / November 2008

Welcome to issue 34 of Research Notes, our quarterly publication reporting on matters relating to research, test development and validation within Cambridge ESOL. This issue is the first of two issues that continue the theme of the ALTE 2008 conference that Cambridge Assessment hosted in April. This event focused on the social and educational impact of language assessment and involved hundreds of delegates from many countries. In this issue we include contributions from Cambridge ESOL colleagues and external contributors, all of whom describe various aspects of the educational impact of language assessment in a range of contexts. Alongside Research Notes issues 34 and 35 an ALTE 2008 Proceedings volume is being prepared for the Studies in Language Testing series which will be published in 2010. In the first two articles, the impact of society on language testing is explored in two contrasting contexts. Cecilie Carlsen describes the impact of Norwegian society on the development of National Tests of English for school children. Next, Jessica Wu investigates the impact of highstakes testing in Taiwan from the perspective of students and teachers in relation to a popular general English test. The following pair of articles describe recent developments in Cambridge ESOL’s language assessment products relating to the computer-based testing of writing and a new Teaching Knowledge Test module focusing on CLIL. Lucy Chambers explores the impact of computer-based formats on writing performance by comparing the paper-based and computer-based writing from the PET exam. Mick Ashton and Evelina Galaczi then describe the background to the new CLIL module for Cambridge ESOL’s Teaching Knowledge Test, a flexible way to assess teachers’ knowledge about teaching a non-language subject (e.g. history or science) through a second or foreign language such as English. We next focus on the impact of specific exams, with case studies from Uruguay, Poland and Romania. Gerardo Valazza reports on an impact study of TKT on teachers and schools in Uruguay, considering in particular teacher learning. Next, Jo Lewkowicz and Elźbieta Zawadowksa-Kittel present a survey of teachers preparing students for the new school-leaving examination of English in Poland, focusing on perceptions of how it is affecting their teaching and their students’ ability to communicate in English. Turning to Romania, Codruţa Goşa and Luminiţa Frenţiu describe a questionnaire-based case study into teacher and student attitudes towards two high-stakes English language examinations: the English tests of the Romanian schoolleaving examination – the Bacalaureat – and Cambridge ESOL’s Certificate in Advanced English. In the final article Sacha DeVelle describes a study to examiner raters’ use and perceptions of the revised IELTS Pronunciation scale. We finish with short reviews of recent publications of interest. Editorial team for Issue 34: Fiona Barker, Kirsty Sylvester and Lynda Taylor. Editorial Notes 1