HEJ, HU ISSN 1418-7108
Manuscript no.: LIN-001101
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The role of the British Council in enhancing ESP teaching expertise
has already been indicated. The Service English Project (SEP in short)
was launched as early as 1991 in response to ESP needs in the tertiary
sector. Since then they organise and sponsor workshops, in-country
training courses and short and longer courses abroad, as well as
conference participation in order to equip teachers with sound
professional knowledge to meet the ESP challenge. More than 60
teachers of its member institutions have participated in the 3-month
Edinburgh course where not only did they receive thorough ESP training
but also worked on their individual projects.
In the past few years
almost half of the individual projects dealt with some aspect of LSP
proficiency testing. In addition, at in-country workshops the need and
will to harmonise institutional examinations was often expressed,
which was further fuelled by the government decree. In response to
this, in 1997 the SEP launched its testing sub- project with the
threefold aim of enhancing testing expertise, harmonising the ESP
testing practices of member institutions and developing a modular
framework for an ESP examination which the participating institutions
can adapt to their own purposes. Richard West, a well known testing
expert, acts as project consultant and helps us with his invaluable
ideas, most of all in order to enhance the validity and reliability of
the examination and ensure that it conforms to international
standards.
So far we have developed and revised the generic
specifications and set the levels (basic, intermediate and advanced)
relating them to those of the Framework. It is a widely-held view in
Hungary that LSP proficiency examinations are "more difficult" (that
is, their level is higher) than general language proficiency
examinations and also that the latter can be easily converted into the
former by adding specialist terminology. Level- setting is also
important from the point of view of dissolving this myth: it is not a
higher proficiency level that is required but using specific input to
test different sub-skills, using different testing techniques.
Having set the levels, we designed skill-specific descriptors and rating
scales, and drew up a code of practice to ensure that the examinations
are administered the same way in each institution.. Certainly, all
these had been preceeded by much discussion thus the workshops have
become real professional forums. In the "practical" phase of the
project, we designed and piloted specific and generic tasks and
started training the markers and analysing pilot items. The project
itself represents quite a few novel features as yet unfamiliar to
Hungarian LSP proficiency testing practice and it is an invaluable
experience to take part in designing a large-scale proficiency test.
Obviously, what has been described is a work in progress but I am
strongly convinced that it will achieve its aims regardless of whether
the exam is accredited, and will have a positive washback effect on
LSP teaching. On the other hand, the framework can be implemented and
fully made use of, only if it is a recognised examination.
| HEJ, HU ISSN 1418-7108
Manuscript no.: LIN-001101
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|
|