Language and Testing

The main purpose of this study is to scrutinize the role of interaction and its features (asking for agreement, prompting elaboration, paraphrasing, sharing) in a test of oral proficiency. To this end, 80 Iranian intermediate students (16-18 years old) participate in two tests of oral proficiency: one in which the participants do not interact with one another (individual format), and the other interact with a group of 5 members (group format). In the upshot, SPSS version 19 is run to analyze the collected data. The results reveal that test-takers performance differed significantly when they interact with one another. It is, also, shown that features of interaction affect the students’ fluency, accuracy, comprehension, and use of English differently. Key words: group interaction, oral proficiency testing, fluency, accuracy, comprehension, use of English

According to Smith and Nelson in World Englishes (Kachru, 2006:450) and Matsuura (2007), intelligibility, comprehensibility and interpretability are different concepts which are used interchangeably. Intelligibility refers to word or utterance recognition while comprehensibility refers to meaning and interpretability refers to discoursal level—pragmatics, issues which are interwoven in attitudinal aspect of leaning. This paper is an overview of the previous intelligibility article examining the intelligibility of eight different Englishes, USA, UK, Farsi, French, Korean, Chinese, Turkish, and Russian, to two groups of Iranian students—with Turkish and Farsi as their native language. Concluding on the findings of that paper and comparing the case with intelligibility in different levels of education from high-school—aged 14—to university students—aged 20 above, the researcher came to the conclusion the Iranian students need to be aware of the world Englishes and think not of British or American Englishes as the only form of English. Nevertheless, students’ being aware of the speakers’ nationality may change his attitude toward the person, an issue which necessitates further research.

Having a nickname or an English name in English classes in Iran is common. In this qualitative research the participants are 112 elementary pupils, only nine percent of which hasn’t adopted an English name. Based on a questionnaire which was selected in this study most of the names of the pupils are chosen by the students themselves and by the help of their English teacher at school. Some of them choose unusual names like HI or HELLO even girls choose male names. Having an English name gives them a great interest when their teacher or their classmates call them with their English names. Even though those who had an English name were not aware of the meaning of their names or the reason of choosing the names, they like to have nickname. The students believe that having an English name and in some percentage knowing its meaning motivates them to learn better.

In the present global scenario, today’s learners’ of science and technology need to develop an array of skills to achieve their full potential and navigate smoothly through a wide range of professional situations. The traditional educational approach of specializing in the specific subject is no longer considered adequate in the present global society. They need to develop the qualities such as understanding self and others, empathy, effective communication and social values, to create harmonious environment in the organization and society at large. A dire need is felt to broaden the vision of educational objectives to bridge the deep divide between the world of work and world of learning. Hence it is imperative to incorporate the life skills which influence the behavioural traits of the learners and facilitate in developing the individual as a holistic personality and improve their potentials in various dimensions.

This paper attempts to explore the relevance of the Yoruba belief in divinities towards local government reforms in Nigeria. It further argues that elements of traditional cultural imports embedded in the Yoruba belief in divinities can be used to advance democratic development in Nigeria. The paper also looked for relationship between moral value and other socio-philosophical dimensions as the ‘philosophem’ for the study. The paper establishes that the idea of harmonious interaction, mutual cooperation and partnership between the divinities in traditional Yoruba metaphysics can be used to curb the problems of dictatorship, ill-distributive justice and other undemocratic practice battering the path of local government reforms and democratic development in Nigeria. In its contribution to knowledge, the paper emphasizes the practical relevance of the belief in divinities in traditional Yoruba metaphysics as means for understanding, regulating and sustaining democratic development in Nigeria

That intelligence is not static rather dynamic and changeable, so that human being has a wide range of- rather than a restricted set of- capabilities all potentially developable (Gardner, 1983) and that socio-cultural agencies and mediating tools (Derry, 2013) shape and extend the expanse of existing capability to an actualized status were the main impetus to claim that aptitude is not likewise stable. Hence, the psychometrically fixed properties of aptitude test and nature of IQ came to be examined and challenged as the main aim of this study. In the quest to develop the abilities of the test takers in the light of formative assessment, aptitude test in its present form and function, as a psychometric tool routinely applied for student selection and placement, may be considered as biased, for it restricts and forestalls the potential evolution of the ability of the test takers. The argumentative results of the current study reveal that the era of exclusive speculation in the context of standardized tests at the price of the exclusion of socio-culturally-triggered pedagogical agendas and measures has expired, the former being associated with first test, then jump to the conclusion by virtue of a single numeric value and the latter underpinning the socio-culturally embedded motivational variables and alternative assessment. By theoretical implication, the predictive and consequential validity of aptitude test and IQ test are open to debate, being a possible incentive to the researchers to further explore the controversially decontextualized nature of aptitude and IQ test.

This study investigated relationship between Emotional intelligence and willingness to communication in speaking ability. To this end, three types of instruments were applied to collect research data, i.e., Mccrosky’s (1992) Willingness to Communicate Scale, Bar-On’s (1997) Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) as well as a final achievement exam administered at the end of the term to gather students English speaking grades. For the analysis of the data correlation and independent samples t- test to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance were used. The findings indicated that there was a relationship between speaking ability and emotional intelligence. Also, there was a positive relationship between speaking ability and willingness to communication. On the other hand, there was not a significant difference between females and males on the speaking task, emotional intelligence and willingness to communicate.

The present study attempted to explore empirical evidence to see if there is an association between test anxiety, multiple intelligence (MI) and EFL learners’ writing test performance. To this end, a Multiple Intelligence Checklist, a Test Anxiety Scale, and one IELTS writing task were given to 40 upper intermediate participants from three classes of two language institutes. The results revealed that test anxiety and learners’ writing performance had a negative but not statistically strong correlation. Further, there was a significant correlation (sig= 0.039 < 0.05) between linguistic intelligence and writing test performance. Accordingly, language teachers should regard test fairness by helping learners who have low linguistic intelligence.

Abstract Error analysis is among the interests of many language researchers. Beginning from the times when behaviorism was popular, and following the contrastive analysis studies, error analysis researches have been conducted and researchers aimed at having an insight into language development through their researches. Although language teaching approaches and methodologies have undergone some changes, error analysis still preserves its place in language teaching and likely to keep its significance in the future. This study investigated the erroneous usages of EFL writers through a controlled writing task. Participants of the study were 31 students at Düzce University, Social Work Department, Turkey. The study was conducted in the first semester of 2014-2015 academic year. Student errors that constituted the research data were grouped into 8 categories. The results of the study suggested that the majority of errors were in the conjugation of verbs with a 53.92 percent, where errors of omission, orthography, subject-verb agreement, substitution, word order, addition, and declension of nouns followed respectively. Resulting from the data obtained throughout the study, some instructional implications were provided mainly for the researchers, language teachers, curriculum designers, and coursebook authors. KEYWORDS: Error analysis, Controlled writing, Writing assessment, Error types

Abstract: Dynamic assessment (henceforth, DA) is an approach to assessment which is derived from Vygotsky’s notion of zone of proximal development (ZPD). More precisely, DA is as an alternative to traditional testing which emphasizes greatly on the role of interaction. Recently, the focus of research has shifted from testing listening to teaching it through the use of dynamic assessment; therefore, the present paper aims at reviewing the implementation of dynamic assessment (DA) on listening comprehension. Reviewing the literature has shown that generally dynamic assessment has led learner’s development in listening comprehension. Moreover, the present paper concluded some valuable points. First, group dynamic assessment was conducted in most studies. Second, researchers applied mixed method in their researches. Third, interactionist kind of DA was mainly used and finally lower-intermediate and intermediate learners were the subjects of most studies