Abstract
This book presents research and reflection on the important and complex questions that arise when universities wish to assess the English language skills of newly enrolled students. The primary purpose of this post-admission testing is to provide students with appropriate and effective follow-up support that ideally would enable them to achieve their potential in their respective areas of study. This particular collection of testing research expands on issues raised in an earlier volume by Read (2015) that describe post-admission language assessments and applications in Australia and New Zealand. The current volume presents research on some of these same assessments and significantly extends the range of coverage to include English-medium universities in Canada, Hong Kong, the United States, Oman, and South Africa.
Because many of these assessments, as well as the pedagogical resources to which they are linked, are institutionally developed, this book will be of interest not only to language testing researchers but also to those administrators and faculty members at English-medium universities who are tasked with supporting their students’ English language needs.
The book is organized into five parts: an introductory chapter, a section on undergraduate education (Chapters 2–5), a section on meeting the needs of graduate students (Chapters 6–7), a section on assessment design considerations (Chapters 8–10), and a concluding chapter. It is important to keep in mind that these post-admission English language assessments are intended to be distinct from general proficiency and placement tests in that they are administered after any admission requirements are met and are designed to be at least somewhat diagnostic in nature. In most cases, results from these types of tests are meant to guide students toward university resources that would help them achieve their potential in their studies and to optimize their employability upon graduation.
In his introduction (Chapter 1), Read identifies and provides valuable background information on trends in post-admission assessment around the world and describes important details of the considerable work that has been done in Australia and New Zealand. He then introduces the following chapters and highlights the unique contributions of each. Read completes the introduction by describing three common themes that run throughout many of the chapters: validation of these assessments; the importance of feedback from students; and the extent to which these assessments actually serve diagnostic functions.
Upon reading through the subsequent chapters, it becomes clear that when a university begins to consider implementing post-admission language assessments, several very important questions surface immediately: Who should take the language assessments – international students, domestic students, or all students? Should the assessments and pedagogical resources focus on academic literacy within particular disciplines or on general academic language proficiency? Should participation be optional or required? and How can the program be structured so as not to deny anyone access to a degree of study once admitted? Should the assessments be developed locally, or should attempts be made to adopt existing tests that have proven to be successful in other contexts? In order for the tests to have diagnostic value, what subskills and knowledge should be targeted (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, discipline-specific vocabulary)? Which, if any, of the four traditional skills should still be included? The reader will find perspectives on these questions throughout the book.
It also becomes evident that equally as challenging as establishing the assessment component(s) is putting in place feasible and effective pedagogical resources that allow students to address the language weaknesses identified by the assessments. The options include offering credit-bearing courses in English as a second language/academic or English/academic writing, short courses, workshops, tutoring, peer mentoring, and embedding English-improvement resources (and possibly more assessments) in first-year subject courses or even throughout the curriculum year by year. Additional possibilities include the creation of online resources and mentoring programs.
We also learn that the success of such initiatives could be measured not only by test–retest score gains but also by the perception of needs met and desirable outcomes quantified with evidence from grade point average (GPA) scores and graduation rates. Additional arguments for the assessments could refer to enhanced employability and respectable performances at conferences (i.e., related to perceptions of professionalism). Administrators have to become involved in order to frame policy matters such as entrance and exit requirements while remaining realistic about outcomes and not creating unreasonable hurdles to graduation. After all of that, there will still be the nagging question of whether the consequences have been adequately examined. In fact, it would be a valuable exercise for readers to anticipate potentially positive and negative consequences for their own contexts, while reading through these chapters, where post-admission assessment has been adopted in other situations.
As mentioned, all contributions in Part II pertain to undergraduate education. In Chapter 2, Ute Knoch, Cathie Elder, and Sally O’Hagan report on a trial of a test of general academic language proficiency at the University of Melbourne called the Post-admission Assessment of Language (PAAL). In Chapter 3, the researchers Janna Fox, John Haggerty, and Natasha Artemeva describe discipline-specific measures embedded in a first-year engineering course. In Chapter 4, Edward Li introduces the English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA) in Hong Kong, a four-skills-plus-vocabulary battery that is also embedded in a first-year course. In Chapter 5, Alan Urmston, Michelle Raquel, and Vahid Aryadoust report on a longitudinal test in Hong Kong, the Diagnostic English Language Tracking Assessment (DELTA) – a sophisticated computer-based test that is intended to individualize learning as a student progresses through formal English language classes.
Turning to the contributions to graduate education in Part III, Chapter 6, by Xun Yan, Suthathip Ploy Thirakunkovit, Nancy L. Kauper, and April Ginther, describes the Oral English Proficiency Test (OEPT), which primarily assesses the oral skills needed to be employable as a teaching assistant, a matter of great importance to many universities. In Chapter 7, John Read and Janet von Randow describe the adaptation of the Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA), which had been developed for assessing undergraduate students, primarily through the addition of an extended writing task to make it appropriate for assessing new doctoral candidates at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
The assessment design issues in Part IV will obviously be of interest to test developers. In Chapter 8, by Thomas Roche, Michael Harrington, Yogesh Sinha, and Christopher Denman, a vocabulary recognition task is used as the basis for a screening instrument in Oman. In Chapter 9, by Albert Weideman, Rebecca Patterson, and Anna Pot, the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) and its Afrikaans counterpart, the Toetsvan Akademiese Geletterdheidsvlakke (TAG), are presented with a generic, as opposed to discipline-specific, construct of academic literacy. Weideman et al. reconsidered the construct and proposed new item types. In Chapter 10, Avasha Rambiritch and Albert Weideman present the Test of Academic Literacy for Postgraduate Students (TALPS), which, like TALL and TAG, is a product of the Inter-institutional Centre for Language Development and Assessment (ICELDA). In this case, an argumentative writing task was included to give the assessment more face validity to postgraduate supervisors.
Among his conclusions, Read makes the point that universities tend to decide to adopt post-admission assessment programs as part of a larger initiative – one that includes analysis of goals and resources, costs and benefits, and positive/negative messages. Such programs are also desirable in order to develop professional communication skills that enhance employability. Academic literacy in the disciplines is developed through the collaboration of students, academic teaching staff, and English language specialists. Read also makes a useful note of the existence of a database of resources and policies in Australia that could be more widely applicable and provides a link to the resources, the Degrees of Proficiency website: www.degreesofproficiency.aall.org.au (p. 222).
The remaining collaborative challenges for researchers are to increase the diagnostic value of assessments and to continue to work with curricular specialists who develop the pedagogical means of addressing the needs that are assessed by the new instruments. Meanwhile, although some off-the-shelf assessments may become widely available, for most institutions it will be a matter of committing to the development of both local assessments and pedagogical resources (and deciding whether they should be stand-alone or embedded, on- or offline, mandatory or self-selected, etc.).
The line of inquiry and the commentary presented here take the reader to the limits of current understanding of the complex issues associated with assessing and meeting the language needs of university students. Knowing where these limits lie is important, because it is right where test developers, faculty members, and English-medium university administrators want to be – on the forefront of knowledge and practice, doing all they can do for the many stakeholders in these educational contexts. Reading this book will definitely head them in that direction.