Post-admission Language Assessment of University Students

246 Pages·2016·5.48 MB·English

by  John Read (eds.)

English Language Education
John Read Editor
Post-admission
Language
Assessment
of University
Students
English Language Education
Volume 6
Series Editors
Chris Davison, The University of New South Wales, Australia
Xuesong Gao, The University of Hong Kong, China
Editorial Advisory Board
Stephen Andrews, University of Hong Kong, China
Anne Burns, University of New South Wales, Australia
Yuko Goto Butler, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Suresh Canagarajah, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Jim Cummins, OISE, University of Toronto, Canada
Christine C. M. Goh, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technology
University, Singapore
Margaret Hawkins, University of Wisconsin, USA
Ouyang Huhua, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
Andy Kirkpatrick, Griffi th University, Australia
Michael K. Legutke, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany
Constant Leung, King’s College London, University of London, UK
Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia, Canada
Elana Shohamy, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Qiufang Wen, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China
Lawrence Jun Zhang, University of Auckland, New Zealand
More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/11558
John Read
Editor
Post-admission Language
Assessment of University
Students
Editor
John Read
School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics
University of Auckland
Auckland , New Zealand
ISSN 2213-6967 ISSN 2213-6975 (electronic)
English Language Education
ISBN 978-3-319-39190-8 ISBN 978-3-319-39192-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39192-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948219
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
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Pref ace
T his volume grew out of two conference events that I organised in 2013 and 2014.
The fi rst was a symposium at the Language Testing Research Colloquium in Seoul,
South Korea, in July 2013 with the title “Exploring the diagnostic potential of post-
admission language assessments in English-medium universities”. The other event
was a colloquium entitled “Exploring post-admission language assessments in uni-
versities internationally” at the Annual Conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Portland, Oregon, USA, in March 2014. The AAAL
symposium attracted the attention of the Springer commissioning editor, Jolanda
Voogt, who invited me to submit a proposal for an edited volume of the papers
presented at one conference or the other. In order to expand the scope of the book,
I invited Edward Li and Avasha Rimbiritch, who were not among the original
p resenters, to prepare additional chapters. Several of the chapters acquired an extra
author along the way to provide specialist expertise on some aspects of the
content.
I want to express my great appreciation fi rst to the authors for the rich and stimu-
lating content of their papers. On a more practical level, they generally met their
deadlines to ensure that the book would appear in a timely manner and they will-
ingly undertook the necessary revisions of their original submissions. Whatever my
virtues as an editor, I found that as an author I tended to trail behind the others in
completing my substantive contributions to the volume.
At Springer, I am grateful to Jolanda Voogt for seeing the potential of this topic
for a published volume and encouraging us to develop it. Helen van der Stelt has
been a most effi cient editorial assistant and a pleasure to work with. I would also
like to thank the series editors, Chris Davison and Andy Gao, for their ongoing sup-
port and encouragement. In addition, two anonymous reviewers of the draft manu-
script gave positive feedback and very useful suggestions for revisions.
v
vi Preface
The concerns addressed in this book are of increasing importance to English-
medium universities and other institutions which are admitting students from
diverse language backgrounds. We hope that these contributions will help to clarify
the issues and offer a range of concrete solutions to the challenge of ensuring that
students’ language and literacy needs are being met.
Auckland , New Zealand John Read
April 2016
Contents
Part I Introduction
1 Some Key Issues in Post-Admission Language Assessment . . . . . . . . . . 3
John Read
Part II Implementing and Monitoring Undergraduate Assessments
2 Examining the Validity of a Post-Entry Screening
Tool Embedded in a Specific Policy Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Ute Knoch , Cathie Elder , and Sally O’Hagan
3 Mitigating Risk: The Impact of a Diagnostic Assessment
Procedure on the First-Year Experience in Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Janna Fox , John Haggerty , and Natasha Artemeva
4 The Consequential Validity of a Post-Entry Language
Assessment in Hong Kong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Edward Li
5 Can Diagnosing University Students’ English Proficiency
Facilitate Language Development? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Alan Urmston , Michelle Raquel , and Vahid Aryadoust
Part III Addressing the Needs of Doctoral Students
6 What Do Test-Takers Say? Test-Taker Feedback
as Input for Quality Management of a Local Oral
English Proficiency Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Xun Yan, Suthathip Ploy Thirakunkovit, Nancy L. Kauper,
and April Ginther
7 Extending Post-Entry Assessment to the Doctoral Level:
New Challenges and Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
John Read and Janet von Randow
vii
viii Contents
Part IV Issues in Assessment Design
8 Vocabulary Recognition Skill as a Screening Tool
in English-as-a-Lingua-Franca University Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Thomas Roche , Michael Harrington , Yogesh Sinha ,
and Christopher Denman
9 Construct Refinement in Tests of Academic Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Albert Weideman , Rebecca Patterson , and Anna Pot
10 Telling the Story of a Test: The Test of Academic Literacy
for Postgraduate Students (TALPS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Avasha Rambiritch and Albert Weideman
Part V Conclusion
11 Reflecting on the Contribution of Post- Admission Assessments . . . . 219
John Read
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Contributors
Natasha Artemeva S chool of Linguistics and Language Studies, C arleton
University , Ottawa , Canada
Vahid Aryadoust National Institute of Education , Nanyang Technological
University , Singapore , Republic of Singapore
Christopher Denman Humanities Research Center , Sultan Qaboos University ,
Muscat , Oman
Cathie Elder Language Testing Research Centre , University of Melbourne ,
Melbourne , Australia
Janna Fox School of Linguistics and Language Studies , Carleton University ,
Ottawa , Canada
April Ginther Department of English , Purdue University , West Lafayette , IN ,
USA
John Haggerty D epartment of Language and Literacy Education, U niversity of
British Columbia , Vancouver , Canada
Michael Harrington S chool of Languages and Cultures, U niversity of Queensland,
Brisbane , Australia
Nancy L. Kauper Oral English Profi ciency Program , Purdue University , West
Lafayette , IN , USA
Ute Knoch Language Testing Research Centre , University of Melbourne ,
Melbourne , Australia
Edward Li Center for Language Education , The Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology , Hong Kong , China
Sally O’Hagan Language Testing Research Centre , University of Melbourne ,
Melbourne , Australia
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