Language Assessment Literacy in Theory and Practice
After examining several definitions of assessment literacy, or basic knowledge of testing, the testing awareness needs of several different groups are discussed. Firstly, what do teachers need to know about testing, and how is this knowledge best delivered to them? Then we observe the needs of stakeholders who are not directly involved in education, namely, policy makers, followed by those of university administrators. Finally the situation in university teaching is presented , and recommendations for improving assessment literacy are suggested. The term literacy has broadened considerably in its scope over the last 100 years. Initially of course it means the ability to read and write, a skill which for many centuries was the exclusive preserve of social elites. In a fairly static society and before the wide availability of texts with the invention of printing, illiteracy was hardly a handicap for the mass of the population. However, with the increasing complexity of society and the resulting need for gaining knowledge by reading and writing, individuals were motivated to make the effort to become literate, and finally in advanced countries the state enforced literacy by providing free compulsory education. Naturally this worked two ways: people were able to advance socially through their knowledge, but the
The essentials of assessment literacy: Contrasts between testers and users
Language assessment literacy refers to language instructors’ familiarity with testing definitions and the application of this knowledge to classroom practices in general and specifically to issues related to assessing language. While it is widely agreed that classroom teachers need to assess student progress, many teachers and other test users have a limited understanding of assessment fundamentals. To help meet this need, a tutorial for foreign language instructors was developed (CAL, 2009) to describe the basics of language assessment and assist with test selection. In this project, group interviews and surveys were used to elicit feedback from two groups of experts, US language instructors (N = 44) and language testers (N = 30), on the content of the tutorial. The results of the project revealed the challenges of including the technical information considered essential by testers while meeting the real and practical needs of teachers. This paper investigates efforts to elicit language testers’ beliefs about measurement basics compared with those of language educators and suggests that expert beliefs about what is essential to include in such materials differ depending on the expert perspective.
Correlations for mass transfer between fluidized spheres and a liquid
Abstract Data on mass transfer between the solid particles and the liquid in a fluidized bed have been analyzed. After a convenient selection, various correlations have been derived. They show that for a given fluidized system, the Sherwood number is independent on the Reynolds number.