From monolingual to bilingual through testing: The OPENPAU Project (FFI2011-22442)
Teachers in Spain have long criticised the effect of language testing in their classrooms. For example, García Laborda and Fernández Álvarez (2012) discuss the reactions of teachers from Navarre (northern Spain) and Madrid towards the country?s current University Entrance Examination (Prueba de Acce...
| Authors: | , |
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| Format: | book |
| Publication Date: | 2016 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universidad de Alcalá (UAH) |
| Repository: | e_Buah Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcalá |
| Language: | English |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ebuah.uah.es:10017/57994 |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10017/57994 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Filología Philology |
| Summary: | Teachers in Spain have long criticised the effect of language testing in their classrooms. For example, García Laborda and Fernández Álvarez (2012) discuss the reactions of teachers from Navarre (northern Spain) and Madrid towards the country?s current University Entrance Examination (Prueba de Acceso a la Universidad, henceforth, PAU), the most important high-stakes test in the country. The exam has no speaking or listening tasks, and the teachers feel that this format impedes development of oral skills. Although the potentially positive impact of including speaking and listening tasks (Alderson and Wall 1993, Hughes 1989) is one of the main reasons for changing the PAU, the delivery and rubrics of the components must first be designed (García Laborda and Martin-Monje 2013). The main goal of this paper is to address what has been done in the last year in relation to these issues. Some of the results of research carried out through the OPENPAU project in Spain, which emphasises the application of technology to individual and paired/group testing, are described here. The paper concludes that the use of low-cost technology for the test may have a very positive impact on the Spanish educational system. It also suggests that the integration of speaking tasks at the end of different educational cycles can also have a potentially positive washback effect (Wall 2000, Wall and Alderson 1993) |
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