IELTS Research Reports

Learning to play the ‘classroom tennis’ well:IELTS and international students in teacher educationout of a concern that substantial numbers of LBOTE graduates entering teacher education courseswere unable either to function effectively during their school-based teaching practice or ultimatelyto perform credibly as teachers. The assessment procedure offered a means for determining theextent to which their difficulties were related to language. While the findings are reported cautiously,Elder found trends that subject specialist raters of LBOTE teacher trainees emphasised interactivestrategies above all else, and considered language proficiency in terms of real-world criteria (i.e., areteachers creating the necessary conditions for classroom learning to take place?) In behaving thus,they assessed language in terms of successful task completion. Language experts, on the other hand,tended to focus on the quality of the language sample elicited through teaching. Elder concluded that‘If we accept that there are instances where the formulation of an acceptable and intelligible messagedepends on discipline- or occupation-specific knowledge, the involvement of subject specialistsas assessors (notwithstanding the strain that this may place on reliability) should be regarded as acondition of test validity’ (1993a, p 249; see also Elder and Brown, 1997, p 77). The ‘Hymesian’ ‘nonlinguistic’factors (Elder, 1993a, Elder and Brown, 1997) in communicative competence which subjectspecialist teachers favoured in their rating of performance– sensitivity to audience, interactive skilland personal style – are indeed crucial attributes of teacher communicative competence, though theyare not necessarily rated highly in language testing by language experts. In terms of using teachingsimulations rather than on-the-job assessments, Elder and Brown (1997) built on Elder’s earlier(1993a) conclusions by arguing that, ‘Rather than being seduced by the appearance of authenticity intoaccepting that performance tests are necessarily more valid than traditional types of assessment, weneed to find ways of ensuring that there is a reasonable degree of fit between behaviours elicited fromcandidates in the artificial environment of the test and actual performance in the target domain’(Elderand Brown, 1997, p 77).In addition, Elder has suggested a number of principles for the testing of teachers of languages (L2)which can again be usefully applied in the context of LBOTE teachers operating in English. Becausemost possible uses of teacher language cannot be accommodated in a test, she suggests that thefollowing principles drive testing:■■■■scope: all four macro-skills should be included, a broad range of language functions andeach category of Ellis’ inventory (referred to above).frequency: giving preference to tasks most frequently performed and greater weighting tospeaking■■importance (Elder, 1994b, p 10).Elder reported on a performance test (Elder, 1994b, pp 11ff) based on these principles,which consisted of:■■■■■■■■■■story readingstory retellingassigning and modelling a role playcultural presentationpupil error correctionAgain, most aspects of such a test would be appropriate in the situation of LBOTE teachers working inEnglish for a range of curriculum areas.IELTS Research Reports Volume 1189