Schedule: 2009-09-12 (15:45 - 16:30)
Parallel Session 5 (Room A-35)

Title: Creating a computer-based placement test.
Authors: Martine Swennen
Abstract: At our university we offer several courses of English. These are courses focussing on writing, on speaking, or on a mixture of skills. The courses focussing on writing and speaking are offered at two levels, the general skills courses at four. As the level of students joining our courses is quite divers, it is necessary to assess students before they join a course, to see which course is most suitable for them.
In the past we used a pen-and-paper placement test: 100 words in total were taken from short texts dealing with topics of general and more scientific interest. Apart from this gap-fill test we asked students to write a number of paragraphs about their academic career and why they wanted to take an English course. This system worked well for our organisation and students enrolled in the course that was most appropriate for them.
With a growing number of students, however, testing them this way became too time-consuming, so we opted for a commercially available placement test that seemed a good alternative. We still added the two questions on the students’ academic career and the English course.
Having administered this test with the added questions several times now, we noticed that the results from the test did not always match our expectations when assessing the written component. About one third of the students scored either (much) higher or lower than we would have expected. This led us to consider alternatives and as our university is starting a pilot project on computer-based testing, we are given the opportunity to see if we can create a test ourselves that suits our needs better.
Using Question Mark Perception we will create a test based on the old pen-and-paper test. To this we will add questions that reflect the contents of our courses, for instance questions on grammar aspects. We will use the current semester to try out these new tests by involving students who have already joined our courses.
During my presentation I will present the results of this project and touch upon the problems we may encounter.
Keywords: placement test; computer-based testing; English teaching

Main topic: Assessment, testing, feedback and guidance in CALL

Biodata: Martine Swennen has an MA in both English and Applied Linguistics. She has taught English as a foreign language in Higher Education in the Netherlands for 15 years and now works at Delft University of Technology. Her professional fields of interest are CALL, pronunciation, and vocabulary acquisition.
Type of presentation Paper presentation

Paper category Reflective Practice

Target educational sector Higher education

Language of delivery English

EU-funded project No

Schedule:	2009-09-12 (15:45 - 16:30) Parallel Session 5 (Room A-35)
Title:	Creating a computer-based placement test.
Authors:	Martine Swennen
Abstract:	At our university we offer several courses of English. These are courses focussing on writing, on speaking, or on a mixture of skills. The courses focussing on writing and speaking are offered at two levels, the general skills courses at four. As the level of students joining our courses is quite divers, it is necessary to assess students before they join a course, to see which course is most suitable for them. In the past we used a pen-and-paper placement test: 100 words in total were taken from short texts dealing with topics of general and more scientific interest. Apart from this gap-fill test we asked students to write a number of paragraphs about their academic career and why they wanted to take an English course. This system worked well for our organisation and students enrolled in the course that was most appropriate for them. With a growing number of students, however, testing them this way became too time-consuming, so we opted for a commercially available placement test that seemed a good alternative. We still added the two questions on the students’ academic career and the English course. Having administered this test with the added questions several times now, we noticed that the results from the test did not always match our expectations when assessing the written component. About one third of the students scored either (much) higher or lower than we would have expected. This led us to consider alternatives and as our university is starting a pilot project on computer-based testing, we are given the opportunity to see if we can create a test ourselves that suits our needs better. Using Question Mark Perception we will create a test based on the old pen-and-paper test. To this we will add questions that reflect the contents of our courses, for instance questions on grammar aspects. We will use the current semester to try out these new tests by involving students who have already joined our courses. During my presentation I will present the results of this project and touch upon the problems we may encounter.
Keywords:	placement test; computer-based testing; English teaching
Main topic:	Assessment, testing, feedback and guidance in CALL
Biodata:	Martine Swennen has an MA in both English and Applied Linguistics. She has taught English as a foreign language in Higher Education in the Netherlands for 15 years and now works at Delft University of Technology. Her professional fields of interest are CALL, pronunciation, and vocabulary acquisition.
Type of presentation	Paper presentation
Paper category	Reflective Practice
Target educational sector	Higher education
Language of delivery	English
EU-funded project	No