The 5th Annual International Conference of the Asian Association for Language Assessment (AALA) (AALA 2018)

185 / 2018-03-30 14:12:49

BRITISH COUNCIL CHINA ITEM WRITING TRAINING AND ITS ROLE IN IMPROVING PARTICIPANT LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT LITERACY

language assessment literacy,standards,item writing,professional development,training

Plenary track > Principles and methodology of developing standards for language assessment

Improving language assessment literacy (LAL) of various test stakeholders, particularly teachers and raters, is increasingly viewed as necessary in language testing. However, while many research studies converge and agree there is a need for increased LAL, the practicalities of actually implementing workable LAL training are underexplored. To address this need, the British Council has created an extensive item writing training program to expand the roles and opportunities available to their members of staff and raise internal standards of language assessment and professional development. An innovative feature of this program is the combination of theoretical input with practice in analyzing and writing language test tasks, thus benefitting participants not only in gaining the essential skills of language test item writers, but also in fostering a greater understanding of the test construct and test development process.

This paper will review the rationale and steps taken to create this item writing training program. It will then proceed to give an overview of the course LAL component, as well as providing some preliminary evidence of an improvement in overall LAL among course participants.