Shohamy Response

I tend to agree with Shohamy that there is a "pressing need for language testers to develop a variety of procedures to elicit and assess discourse skills" (pg. 213). Sometimes I feel that teachers may get caught up with all the responsibilities that goes with being a teacher, and forget about what is best for ALL of their students. There is a tendency where we assess students the same way each unit, chapter, assignment, etc., with gap-filling, multiple choice, true-false, etc. worksheets and tests that only test the basic and/or academic language. As we have learned from our 346 class and the anthologies unit, there are different alternative assessments we can give students, like portfolios, journals, and speeches in order to evaluate our students. As we know, every student functions differently in the academic setting. Therefore, shouldn't we find different ways of assessment? However, there are questions of how much variety there should be, or the amount of class time would be used.

What are some thoughts from the cohort? I think it is possible to use a variety, but explaining it to the "higher-ups" may be the more difficult part.

Shohamy (1994) had done some research on was the use of humans versus machines to elicit oral samples. The results showed the "language obtained from the video-recorded and audio-recorded procedures was more direct and did not involve much use of pragmatic devices; the language elicited from test takers interacting directly with testers (i.e. face-to-face or telephone) was more elaborated and indirect and involved a large number of pragmatic and social devices" (pg. 207). The results overall found that the telephone task included the highest amounts of pragmatic devices and was the most elaborated. I just find it interesting that a face-to-face context would not use as many, or more, pragmatic devices than the telephone. It would be interesting to re-test that now with how the use of texting has decreased the use of phone usage among the upcoming generations. A face-to-face conversation just feels a lot more authentic.

What does everyone else think of the results concluded (pg. 207)?


Good luck to everyone with Dr. Kang's final tomorrow!

Blogfully yours,
The TESOL Bro,
Tommy T.