Автор: admin

University of Latvia

Faculty of Modern Languages

English Department

Types of Tests Used in English Language.

Bachelor Paper

An?elika Ozerova

Riga

2004

Declaration of academic Integrity

I hereby declare that this study is my own and does not contain any unacknowledged material from any source.

Signed:

12 May, 2004

Abstract.

The present paper attempts to investigate various types of tests and their application in the language classroom. The theoretical part deals with the basic data about testing, the comparison of such issues as assessment and valuation, reasons for testing, types of tests, such as diagnostic, progress, achievement, placement and proficiency tests; test formats and ways of testing.

It relates theory to practice by analyzing two proficiency tests:

TOEFL and CFC tests. They are carefully discussed and compared to find any similarities or differences in their structure and design. The conclusions drawn are based on the theory and analyses of the tests. The data obtained indicate that the both tests though being sometimes different in their purpose, design and structure, are constructed according to the universally accepted pattern.

Table of Contents

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………1

Chapter 1

What is test?……………………………………………………………………3

Chapter 2

2.1 Inaccurate tests…………………………………………………………….7

2.2 Validity……………………..……………………………………………..8

2.3 Reliability………….. ……………………………………………………11

Chapter 3

3.1 Diagnostic tests………………………………. ………………………….13

3.2 Placement tests…………………………………………………………….15

3.3 Progress tests……………………………………………………………………17

3.4 Achievement tests………………………..……………………………….18

3.5 Proficiency tests…………………………………………………………..20

Chapter 4

4.1 Direct and Indirect testing…..…………………………………………….22

4.2 Discrete point and integrative testing……………………………………..24

4.3 Criterion-refernced and Norm-referenced testing…………………………25

4.4 Objective and Subjective testing…………………………………………..26

4.5 Communicative language testing…………………………………………26

Chapter 5

5.1 Multiple choice tests………………………………………………………29

5.2 Short answer tests…………………………………………………………32

5.3 The Cloze tests and Gap-filling tests……………………………………..33

5.4 C-Test……………………………………………………………………..35

5.5 True/false items……………………………………………………………36

5.6 Dictation……………………………………………………………………36

5.7 Listening Recall……………………………………………………………38

5.8 Testing Grammar through Error-recognition Items……………………….38

5.9 Controlled Writing…………………………………………………………39

5.10 Free Writing………………………………………………………………40

5.11 Test Formats Used in Testing Speaking Skills…………………………..41

Chapter 6

Analysis of the Test of English as a Foreign Language and Cambridge

First

Certificate test according to test design criteria………………………………..43

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………55

Theses. ……………………………………………………………………………..57

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..59

Appendix

Introduction

Among all words used in a classroom there is the only word that usually makes the students shudder: “test”. There is hardly a person who would claim that s/he favours tests and finds them very motivating.
However, tests cannot be avoided completely, for they are inevitable elements of learning process. They are included into curriculum at schools and are to check the students’ level of knowledge and what they are able to do; they could be accomplished at the beginning of the study year and at the end of it; the students could be tested after working on new topics and acquiring new vocabulary. Moreover, the students are to face the tests in order to enter any foreign university or reveal the level of their English language skills for themselves. For that purpose they take specially designed tests that are Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL test (further in the text) and CFC (further in the text), or Cambridge
First Certificate. Although, these tests can sometimes serve for different purposes and are unrelated, they are sometimes quite common in their design and structure. Therefore, the author of the paper is particularly interested in the present research, for she assumes it to be of a great significance not only for herself, but also for the individuals who are either involved in the field or just want to learn more about TOEFL and CFC tests, their structure, design and application. Therefore, the present research will display various aspects of the theory discussed, accompanied with the practical part vastly analyzed.

Thus, the goal of the present research is to investigate various types of test formats and ways of testing, focusing particularly on TOEFL and CFC tests, in order to see how the theory is used and could be applied in practice.

The hypothesis is as follows: Serving for almost similar purpose, however being sometimes different in their design and structure, the TOEFL and CFC tests are usually constructed according to the accepted universal pattern.

The enabling objectives are as follows:
. To review literature on the nature of tests in order to make theoretically well-motivated discussions on the choice of testing types;
. To analyse the selected types of tests, such as TOEFL and CFC tests;
. To draw relevant conclusions.

Methods of Research:

Theoretical:
1) Analytical and selective study of the theory available;
2) Juxtaposition of the ideas selected from theory and tested against practical evidences;
3) Drawing conclusions.

Practical:
. Selecting and adapting appropriate tests types, such as TOEFL and CFC, to exemplify the theory.

The paper consists of six chapters each including sub-chapters.

Chapter 1 discusses the general data about tests. Chapter 2 describes reliability and validity. Chapter 3 focuses on various types of tests.

Chapter 4 deals with ways of testing. Chapter 5 speaks on four language skills. Chapter 6 offers the practical part of the paper.

Chapter 1
What is test?

Hicks (2000:155) considers that the role of tests is very useful and important, especially in language learning. It is a means to show both the students and the teacher how much the learners have learnt during a course.
The author of the paper agrees with the statement, for she believes that in order to see whether the students have acquired the material and are making constant progress, the teacher will inevitably have to test his/her learners. It does not mean that a usual test format with a set of activities will be used all the time. To check the students’ knowledge the teacher can apply a great range of assessment techniques, including even the self-evaluation technique that is so beloved and favoured by the students. Moreover, according to Heaton (1990:6), tests could be used to display the strength and weaknesses of the teaching process and help the teacher improve it. They can demonstrate what should be paid more attention to, should be worked on and practised. Furthermore, the tests results will display the students their weak points, and if carefully guided by the teacher, the students will be even able to take any remedial actions.

Thompson (Forum, 2001) believes that students learn more when they have tests. Here we can both agree and disagree. Certainly, preparing for a test, the student has to study the material that is supposed to be tested, but often it does not mean that such type of learning will obligatory lead to acquisition and full understanding of it. On the opposite, it could often lead to the pure cramming. That, consequently, will result in a stressful situation the student will find her/himself before or during the test, and the final outcome will be a complete deletion of the studied material. We can base that previous statement on our own experience: when working at school, the author of the present research had encountered such examples for many times.

However, very often the tests can facilitate the students’ acquisition process, i.e.: the students are to be checked the knowledge of the irregular verbs forms. Being constantly tested by means of a small test, they can learn them successfully and transfer them to their long-term memory, as well. Although, according to Thompson tests decrease practice and instruction time. What he means is that the students are as if limited; they are exposed to practice of a new material, however, very often the time implied for it is strictly recommended and observed by a syllabus.
That denotes that there will be certain requirements when to use a test.
Thus, the students find themselves in definite frames that the teacher will employ. Nevertheless, there could be advantages that tests can offer: they increase learning, for the students are supposed to study harder during the preparation time before a test.

Thompson (ibid.) quotes Eggan, who emphasises the idea that the learners study hard for the classes they are tested thoroughly. Further, he cites Hilles, who considers that the students want and expect to be tested.
Nonetheless, this statement has been rather generalized. Speaking about the students at school, we can declare that there is hardly a student who will truly enjoy tests and their procedure. Usually, what we will see just sore faces when a test is being mentioned. According to Thompson, the above- mentioned idea could be applied to the students who want to pass their final exams or to get a certificate in Test of English as a Foreign
Language (TOEFL) or First Certificate (FCE). Mostly this concerns adults or the students who have their own special needs, such as going abroad to study or work. This again supports the idea that motivation factor plays a significant role in the learning process.

Moreover, too much of testing could be disastrous. It can entirely change the students’ attitude towards learning the language, especially if the results are usually dissatisfying and decrease their motivation towards learning and the subject in general.

Furthermore, as Alderson (1996:212) assumes, we should not forget that the tests when administered receive less support from the teacher as it is usually during the exercises in a usual language classroom. The students have to cope themselves; they cannot rely on the help of the teacher if they are in doubt. During a usual procedure when doing various activities the students know they can encounter the teacher’s help if they require it.
They know the teacher is always near and ready to assist, therefore, no one is afraid to make a mistake and try to take a chance to do the exercises.
However, when writing a test and being left alone to deal with the test activities, the students panic and forget everything they knew before. The author of the paper believes that first what the teacher should do is to teach the students to overcome their fear of tests and secondly, help them acquire the ability to work independently believing in their own knowledge.
That ability according to Alderson is the main point, “the core meaning” of the test. The students should be given confidence. Here we can refer to
Heaton (1990:7) who conceives, supported by Hicks, that students’ encouragement is a vital element in language learning. Another question that may emerge here is how to reach the goal described above, how to encourage the students. Thus, at this point we can speak about positive results. In fact, our success motivates us to study further, encourages us to proceed even if it is rather difficult and we are about to lose confidence in ourselves. Therefore, we can speak about the tests as a tool to increase motivation. However, having failed for considerable number of times, the student would definitely oppose the previous statement. Hence, we can speak about assessment and evaluation as means for increasing the students’ motivation.

Concerning Hicks (2000:162), we often perceive these two terms – evaluating and assessment – as two similar notions, though they are entirely different. She states that when we assess our students we commonly are interested in “how and how much our students have learnt”, but when we evaluate them we are concerned with “how the learning process is developing”. These both aspects are of great importance for the teacher and the students and should be correlated in order to make evaluation and assessment “go hand in hand”. However, very frequently, the teachers assess the students without taking the aspect of evaluation into account.
According to Hicks, this assessment is typically applied when dealing with examinations that take place either at the end of the course or school year. Such assessment is known as achievement test. With the help of these tests the teacher receives a clear picture of what his/her students have learnt and which level they are comparing with the rest of the class. The author of the paper agrees that achievement tests are very essential for comparing how the students’ knowledge has changed during the course. This could be of a great interest not only for the teacher, but also for the authorities of the educational establishment the teacher is employed by.
Thus, evaluation of the learning process is not of the major importance here. We can speak about evaluation when we deal with “small” tests the teachers use during the course or studying year. It is a well-known fact that these tests are employed in order to check how the learning process is going on, where the students are, what difficulties they encounter and what they are good at. These tests are also called “diagnostic” tests; they could be of a great help for the teacher: judging from the results of the test, analysing them the teacher will be able to improve or alter the course and even introduce various innovations. These tests will define whether the teacher can proceed with the new material or has to stop and return to what has not been learnt sufficiently in order to implement additional practice.

With respect to Hicks, we can display some of her useful and practical ideas she proposes for the teachers to use in the classroom. In order to incorporate evaluation together with assessment she suggests involving the students directly into the process of testing. Before testing vocabulary the teacher can ask the students to guess what kind of activities could be applied in the test. The author of the paper believes that it will give them an opportunity to visage how they are going to be tested, to be aware of and wait for, and the most important, it will reduce fear the students might face. Moreover, at the end of each test the students could be asked their reflections: if there was a multiple choice, what helped them guess correctly, what they used for that – their schemata or just pure guessing; if there was a cloze test — did they use guessing from the context or some other skills, etc. Furthermore, Hicks emphasises that such analysis will display the students the way they are tested and establish an appropriate test for each student. Likewise, evaluation will benefit the teacher as well. S/he not only will be able to discover the students’ preferences, but also find out why the students have failed a particular type of activity or even the whole test. The evaluation will determine what is really wrong with the structure or design of the test itself. Finally, the students should be taught to evaluate the results of the test. They should be asked to spot the places they have failed and together with the teacher attempt to find out what has particularly caused the difficulties. This will lead to consolidation of the material and may be even to comprehension of it.
And again the teacher’s role is very essential, for the students alone are not able to cope with their mistakes. Thus, evaluation is inevitable element of assessment if the teacher’s aim is to design a test that will not make the students fail, but on the contrary, anticipate the test’s results.

To conclude we can add alluding to Alderson (1996:212) that the usual classroom test should not be too complicated and should not discriminate between the levels of the students. The test should test what was taught.
The author of the paper has the same opinion, for the students are very different and the level of their knowledge is different either. It is inappropriate to design a test of advanced level if among your learners there are those whose level hardly exceeds lower intermediate.

Above all, the tests should take the learners’ ability to work and think into account, for each student has his/her own pace, and some students may fail just because they have not managed to accomplish the required tasks in time.

Furthermore, Alderson assumes (ibid.) that the instructions of the test should be unambiguous. The students should clearly see what they are supposed and asked to do and not to be frustrated during the test.
Otherwise, they will spend more time on asking the teacher to explain what they are supposed to do, but not on the completing of the tasks themselves.
Finally, according to Heaton (1990:10) and Alderson (1996:214), the teacher should not give the tasks studied in the classroom for the test. They explain it by the fact, that when testing we need to learn about the students’ progress, but not to check what they remember. The author of the paper concurs the idea and assumes that the one of the aims of the test is to check whether the students are able to apply their knowledge in various contexts. If this happens, that means they have acquired the new material.

Chapter 2

Reliability and validity

1. Inaccurate tests

Hughes (1989:2) conceives that one of the reasons why the tests are not favoured is that they measure not exactly what they have to measure. The author of the paper supports the idea that it is impossible to evaluate someone’s true abilities by tests. An individual might be a bright student possessing a good knowledge of English, but, unfortunately, due to his/her nervousness may fail the test, or vice versa, the student might have crammed the tested material without a full comprehension of it. As a result, during the test s/he is just capable of producing what has been learnt by tremendous efforts, but not elaboration of the exact actual knowledge of the student (that, unfortunately, does not exist at all).
Moreover, there could be even more disastrous case when the student has cheated and used his/her neighbour’s work. Apart from the above-mentioned there could be other factors that could influence an inadequate completion of the test (sleepless night, various personal and health problems, etc.)

However, very often the test itself can provoke the failure of the students to complete it. With the respect to the linguists, such as Hughes
(1989) and Alderson (1996), we are able to state that there are two main causes of the test being inaccurate:

. Test content and techniques;

. Lack of reliability.

The first one means that the test’s design should response to what is being tested. First, the test must content the exact material that is to be tested. Second, the activities, or techniques, used in the test should be adequate and relevant to what is being tested. This denotes they should not frustrate the learners, but, on the contrary, facilitate and help the students write the test successfully.

The next one denotes that one and the same test given at a different time must score the same points. The results should not be different because of the shift in time. For example, the test cannot be called reliable if the score gathered during the first time the test was completed by the students differs from that administered for the second time, though knowledge of the learners has not changed at all. Furthermore, reliability can fail due to the improper design of a test (unclear instructions and questions, etc.) and due to the ways it is scored. The teacher may evaluate various students differently taking different aspects into consideration (level of the students, participation, effort, and even personal preferences.) If there are two markers, then definitely there will be two different evaluations, for each marker will possess his/her own criteria of marking and evaluating one and the same work. For example, let us mention testing speaking skills.
Here one of the makers will probably treat grammar as the most significant point to be evaluated, whereas the other will emphasise the fluency more.
Sometimes this could lead to the arguments between the makers; nevertheless, we should never forget that still the main figure we have to deal with is the student.

2.2. Validity

Now we can come to one of the important aspects of testing – validity.
Concerning Hughes, every test should be reliable as well as valid. Both notions are very crucial elements of testing. However, according to Moss
(1994) there can be validity without reliability, or sometimes the border between these two notions can just blur. Although, apart from those elements, a good test should be efficient as well.

According to Bynom (Forum, 2001), validity deals with what is tested and degree to which a test measures what is supposed to measure (Longman
Dictionary, LTAL). For example, if we test the students writing skills giving them a composition test on Ways of Cooking, we cannot denote such test as valid, for it can be argued that it tests not our abilities to write, but the knowledge of cooking as a skill. Definitely, it is very difficult to design a proper test with a good validity, therefore, the author of the paper believes that it is very essential for the teacher to know and understand what validity really is.

Regarding Weir (1990:22), there are five types of validity:

. Construct validity;

. Content validity

. Face validity

. Wash back validity;

. Criterion-related validity.

Weir (ibid.) states that construct validity is a theoretical concept that involves other types of validity. Further, quoting Cronbach (1971), Weird writes that to construct or plan a test you should research into testee’s behaviour and mental organisation. It is the ground on which the test is based; it is the starting point for a constructing of test tasks. In addition, Weird displays the Kelly’s idea (1978) that test design requires some theory, even if it is indirect exposure to it. Moreover, being able to define the theoretical construct at the beginning of the test design, we will be able to use it when dealing with the results of the test. The author of the paper assumes that appropriately constructed at the beginning, the test will not provoke any difficulties in its administration and scoring later.

Another type of validity is content validity. Weir (ibid.) implies the idea that content validity and construct one are closely bound and sometimes even overlap with each other. Speaking about content validity, we should emphasise that it is inevitable element of a good test. What is meant is that usually duration of the classes or test time is rather limited, and if we teach a rather broad topic such as “computers”, we cannot design a test that would cover all the aspects of the following topic. Therefore, to check the students’ knowledge we have to choose what was taught: whether it was a specific vocabulary or various texts connected with the topic, for it is impossible to test the whole material. The teacher should not pick up tricky pieces that either were only mentioned once or were not discussed in the classroom at all, though belonging to the topic. S/he should not forget that the test is not a punishment or an opportunity for the teacher to show the students that they are less clever.
Hence, we can state that content validity is closely connected with a definite item that was taught and is supposed to be tested.

Face validity, according to Weir (ibid.), is not theory or samples design. It is how the examinees and administration staff see the test: whether it is construct and content valid or not. This will definitely include debates and discussions about a test; it will involve the teachers’ cooperation and exchange of their ideas and experience.

Another type of validity to be discussed is wash back validity or backwash. According to Hughes (1989:1) backwash is the effect of testing on teaching and learning process. It could be both negative and positive.
Hughes believes that if the test is considered to be a significant element, then preparation to it will occupy the most of the time and other teaching and learning activities will be ignored. As the author of the paper is concerned this is already a habitual situation in the schools of our country, for our teachers are faced with the centralised exams and everything they have to do is to prepare their students to them. Thus, the teacher starts concentrating purely on the material that could be encountered in the exam papers alluding to the examples taken from the past exams. Therefore, numerous interesting activities are left behind; the teachers are concerned just with the result and forget about different techniques that could be introduced and later used by their students to make the process of dealing with the exam tasks easier, such as guessing form the context, applying schemata, etc.

The problem arises here when the objectives of the course done during the study year differ from the objectives of the test. As a result we will have a negative backwash, e.g. the students were taught to write a review of a film, but during the test they are asked to write a letter of complaint.
However, unfortunately, the teacher has not planned and taught that.

Often a negative backwash may be caused by inappropriate test design.
Hughes further in his book speaks about multiple-choice activities that are designed to check writing skills of the students. The author of the paper is very confused by that, for it is unimaginable how writing an essay could be tested with the help of multiple choices. Testing essay the teacher first of all is interested in the students’ ability to apply their ideas in writing, how it has been done, what language has been used, whether the ideas are supported and discussed, etc. At this point multiple-choice technique is highly inappropriate.

Notwithstanding, according to Hughes apart form negative side of the backwash there is the positive backwash as well. It could be the creation of an entirely new course designed especially for the students to make them pass their final exams. The test given in a form of final exams imposes the teacher to re-organise the course, choose appropriate books and activities to achieve the set goal: pass the exam. Further, he emphasises the importance of partnership between teaching and testing. Teaching should meet the needs of testing. It could be understand in the following way that teaching should correspond the demands of the test. However, it is a rather complicated work, for according to the knowledge of the author of the paper the teachers in our schools are not supplied with specially designed materials that could assist them in their preparation the students to the exams. The teachers are just given vague instructions and are free to act on their own.

The last type that could be discussed is criterion-related validity. Weir
(1990:22.) assumes that it is connected with test scores link between two different performances of the same test: either older established test or future criterion performance. The author of the paper considers that this type of validity is closely connected with criterion and evaluation the teacher uses to assess the test. It could mean that the teacher has to work out definite evaluation system and, moreover, should explain what she finds important and worth evaluating and why. Usually the teachers design their own system; often these are points that the students can obtain fulfilling a certain task. Later the points are gathered and counted for the mark to be put. Furthermore, the teacher can have a special table with points and relevant marks. According to our knowledge, the language teachers decide on the criteria together during a special meeting devoted to that topic, and later they keep to it for the whole study year. Moreover, the teachers are supposed to make his/her students acquainted with their evaluation system for the students to be aware what they are expected to do.

3. Reliability

According to Bynom (Forum, 2001) reliability shows that the test’s results will be similar and will not change if one and the same test will be given on various days. The author of the paper is of the same mind with
Bynom and presumes the reliability to be the one of the key elements of a good test in general. For, as it has been already discussed before, the essence of reliability is that when the students’ scores for one and the same test, though given at different periods of time and with a rather extended interval, will be approximately the same. It will not only display the idea that the test is well organized, but will denote that the students have acquired the new material well.

A reliable test, according to Bynom, will contain well-formulated tasks and not indefinite questions; the student will know what exactly should be done. The test will always present ready examples at the beginning of each task to clarify what should be done. The students will not be frustrated and will know exactly what they are asked to perform. However, judging form the personal experience, the author of the paper has to admit, that even such hints may confuse the students; they may fail to understand the requirements and, consequently, fail to complete the task correctly. This could be explained by the fact that the students are very often inattentive, lack patience and try to accomplish the test quickly without bothering to double check it.

Further, regarding to Heaton (1990:13), who states that the test could be unreliable if the two different markers mark it, we can add that this factor should be accepted, as well. For example, one representative of marking team could be rather lenient and have different demands and requirements, but the other one could appear to be too strict and would pay attention to any detail. Thus, we can come to another important factor influencing the reliability that is marker’s comparison of examinees’ answers. Moreover, we have to admit a rather sad fact but not the exceptional one that the maker’s personal attitude towards the testee could impact his/her evaluation. No one has to exclude various home or health problems the marker can encounter at that moment, as well.

To summarize, we can say that for a good test possessing validity and reliability is not enough. The test should be practical, or in other words, efficient. It should be easily understood by the examinee, ease scored and administered, and, certainly, rather cheap. It should not last for eternity, for both examiner and examinee could become tired during five hours non-stop testing process. Moreover, testing the students the teachers should be aware of the fact that together with checking their knowledge the test can influence the students negatively. Therefore, the teachers ought to design such a test that it could encourage the students, but not to make them reassure in their own abilities. The test should be a friend, not an enemy. Thus, the issue of validity and reliability is very essential in creating a good test. The test should measure what it is supposed to measure, but not the knowledge beyond the students’ abilities. Moreover, the test will be a true indicator whether the learning process and the teacher’s work is effective.

Chapter 3
Types of tests

Different scholars (Alderson, 1996; Heaton, 1990; Underhill, 1991) in their researches ask the similar question – why test, do the teachers really need them and for what purpose. Further, they all agree that test is not the teacher’s desire to catch the students unprepared with what they are not acquainted; it is also not the motivating factor for the students to study. In fact, the test is a request for information and possibility to learn what the teachers did not know about their students before. We can add here that the test is important for the students, too, though they are unaware of that. The test is supposed to display not only the students’ weak points, but also their strong sides. It could act as an indicator of progress the student is gradually making learning the language. Moreover, we can cite the idea of Hughes (1989:5) who emphasises that we can check the progress, general or specific knowledge of the students, etc. This claim will directly lead us to the statement that for each of these purposes there is a special type of testing. According to some scholars
(Thompson, 2001; Hughes, 1989; Alderson, 1996; Heaton, 1990; Underhill,
1991), there are four traditional categories or types of tests: proficiency tests, achievement tests, diagnostic tests, and placement tests. The author of the paper, once being a teacher, can claim that she is acquainted with three of them and has frequently used them in her teaching practice.

In the following sub-chapters we are determined to discuss different types of tests and if possible to apply our own experience in using them.

3.1. Diagnostic tests

It is wise to start our discussion with that type of testing, for it is typically the first step each teacher, even non-language teacher, takes at the beginning of a new school year. In the establishment the author of the paper was working it was one of the main rules to start a new study year giving the students a diagnostic test. Every year the administration of the school had stemmed a special plan where every teacher was supposed to write when and how they were going to test their students. Moreover, the teachers were supposed to analyse the diagnostic tests, complete special documents and provide diagrams with the results of each class or group if a class was divided. Then, at the end of the study year the teachers were demanded to compare the results of them with the final, achievement test
(see in Appendix 1). The author of the paper has used this type of test for several times, but had never gone deep into details how it is constructed, why and what for. Therefore, the facts listed below were of great value for her.

Referring to Longman Dictionary of LTAL (106) diagnostic tests is a test that is meant to display what the student knows and what s/he does not know. The dictionary gives an example of testing the learners’ pronunciation of English sounds. Moreover, the test can check the students’ knowledge before starting a particular course. Hughes (1989:6) adds that diagnostic tests are supposed to spot the students’ weak and strong points.
Heaton (1990:13) compares such type of test with a diagnosis of a patient, and the teacher with a doctor who states the diagnosis. Underhill
(1991:14.) adds that a diagnostic test provides the student with a variety of language elements, which will help the teacher to determine what the student knows or does not know. We believe that the teacher will intentionally include the material that either is presumed to be taught by a syllabus or could be a starting point for a course without the knowledge of which the further work is not possible. Thus, we fully agree with the
Heaton’s comparison where he contrasts the test with a patient’s diagnosis.
The diagnostic test displays the teacher a situation of the students’ current knowledge. This is very essential especially when the students return from their summer holidays (that produces a rather substantial gap in their knowledge) or if the students start a new course and the teacher is completely unfamiliar with the level of the group. Hence, the teacher has to consider carefully about the items s/he is interested in to teach.
This consideration reflects Heaton’s proposal (ibid.), which stipulates that the teachers should be systematic to design the tasks that are supposed to illustrate the students’ abilities, and they should know what exactly they are testing. Moreover, Underhill (ibid.) points out that apart from the above-mentioned the most essential element of the diagnostic test is that the students should not feel depressed when the test is completed.
Therefore, very often the teachers do not put any marks for the diagnostic test and sometimes even do not show the test to the learners if the students do not ask the teacher to return it. Nevertheless, regarding our own experience, the learners, especially the young ones, are eager to know their results and even demand marks for their work. Notwithstanding, it is up to the teacher whether to inform his/her students with the results or not; however, the test represents a valuable information mostly for the teacher and his/her plans for designing a syllabus.

Returning to Hughes (ibid.) we can emphasise his belief that this type of test is very useful for individual check. It means that this test could be applicable for checking a definite item; it is not necessary that it will cover broader topics of the language. However, further Hughes assumes that this test is rather difficult to design and the size of the test can be even impractical. It means that if the teacher wants to check the students’ knowledge of Present simple, s/he will require a great deal of examples for the students to choose from. It will demand a tiresome work from the teacher to compose such type of the test, and may even confuse the learners.

At that point we can allude to our experience in giving a diagnostic test in Form 5. It was the class the teacher had worked before and knew the students and their level rather good. However, new learners had joined the class, and the teacher had not a slightest idea about their abilities. It was obvious that the students worried about how they would accomplish the test and what marks would they receive. The teacher had ensured them that the test would not be evaluated by marks. It was necessary for the teacher to plan her future work. That was done to release the tension in the class and make the students get rid of the stress that might be crucial for the results. The students immediately felt free and set to work. Later when analysing and summarizing the results the teacher realized that the students’ knowledge was purely good. Certainly, there were the place the students required more practice; therefore during the next class the students were offered remedial activities on the points they had encountered any difficulties. Moreover, that was the case when the students were particularly interested in their marks.

To conclude, we can conceive that interpreting the results of diagnostic tests the teachers apart from predicting why the student has done the exercises the way s/he has, but not the other, will receive a significant information about his/her group s/he is going to work with and later use the information as a basis for the forming syllabus.

3.2 Placement tests

Another type of test we are intended to discuss is a placement test.
Concerning Longman Dictionary of LTAL again (279-280) we can see that a placement test is a test that places the students at an appropriate level in a programme or a course. This term does not refer to the system and construction of the test, but to its usage purpose. According to Hughes
(1989:7), this type of test is also used to decide which group or class the learner could be joined to. This statement is entirely supported by another scholar, such as Alderson (1996:216), who declares that this type of test is meant for showing the teacher the students’ level of the language ability. It will assist to put the student exactly in that group that responds his/her true abilities.

Heaton (ibid.) adheres that the following type of testing should be general and should purely focus on a vast range of topics of the language not on just specific one. Therefore, the placement test typically could be represented in the form of dictations, interviews, grammar tests, etc.

Moreover, according to Heaton (ibid.), the placement test should deal exactly with the language skills relevant to those that will be taught during a particular course. If our course includes development of writing skills required for politics, it is not appropriate to study writing required for medical purposes. Thus, Heaton (ibid.) presumes that is fairly important to analyse and study the syllabus beforehand. For the placement test is completely attributed to the future course programme. Furthermore,
Hughes (ibid.) stresses that each institution will have its own placement tests meeting its needs. The test suitable for one institution will not suit the needs of another. Likewise, the matter of scoring is particularly significant in the case of placement tests, for the scores gathered serve as a basis for putting the students into different groups appropriate to their level.

At this point we can attempt to compare a placement test and diagnostic one. From the first sight these both types of tests could look similar. They both are given at the beginning of the study year and both are meant for distinguishing the students’ level of the current knowledge.
However, if we consider the facts described in sub-chapter 2.1 we will see how they are different. A diagnostic test is meant for displaying a picture of the students’ general knowledge at the beginning of the study year for the teacher to plan further work and design an appropriate syllabus for his/her students. Whereas, a placement test is designed and given in order to use the information of the students’ knowledge for putting the students into groups according to their level of the language. Indeed, they are both used for teacher’s planning of the course their functions differ. A colleague of mine, who works at school, has informed me that they have used a placement test at the beginning of the year and it appeared to be relevant and efficient for her and her colleague’s future teaching. The students were divided according to their English language abilities: the students with better knowledge were put together, whereas the weaker students formed their own group. It does not mean discrimination between the students. The teachers have explained the students the reason for such actions, why it was necessary – they wanted to produce an appropriate teaching for each student taking his/her abilities into account. The teachers have altered their syllabus to meet the demands of the students.
The result proved to be satisfying. The students with better knowledge progressed; no one halted them. The weaker students have gradually improved their knowledge, for they received due attention than it would be in a mixed group.

3.3 Progress test

Having discussed two types of tests that are usually used at the beginning, we can approach the test typically employed during the study year to check the students’ development. We will speak about a progress test. According to Alderson (1996:217), progress test will show the teacher whether the students have learnt the recently taught material successfully.
Basically, the teacher intends to check certain items, not general topics covered during the school or study year. Commonly, it is not very long and is determined to check the recent material. Therefore, the teacher might expect his/her learners to get rather high scores. The following type is supposed to be used after the students have learnt either a set of units on a theme or have covered a definite topic of the language. It will display the teacher whether the material has been successfully acquired or the students need additional practice instead of starting a new material.

A progress test will basically display the activities based on the material the teacher is determined to check. To evaluate it the teacher can work out a certain system of points that later will compose a mark.
Typically, such tests do not influence the students’ final mark at the end of the year.

The authorities of school demand the teachers to conduct progress tests, as well. However, the teachers themselves decide on the necessity of applying them. Nevertheless, we can claim that progress test is inevitable part of the learning process. We can even take a responsibility to declare that progress test facilitate the material acquisition in a way. The students preparing for the test look through the material again and there is a chance it can be transferred to their long-term memory.

Further, we can come to Alderson (ibid.) who presumes that such type of testing could function as a motivating fact for the learners, for success will develop the students’ confidence in their own knowledge and motivate them study further more vigorously. In case, there will be two or three students whose scores are rather low, the teacher should encourage them by providing support in future and imply the idea that studying hard will allow them to catch up with the rest of the students sooner or later.
The author of the paper basing on her experience agrees with the statement, for she had noticed that weaker students when they had managed to write their test successfully became proud of their achievement and started working better.

However, if the majority of the class scores a rather low grade, the teacher should be cautious. This could be a signal that there is either something wrong with the teaching or the students are low motivated or lazy.

3.4 Achievement tests

Apart from a progress test the teachers employ another type – achievement test. According to Longman Dictionary of LTAL (3), an achievement test is a test, which measures a language someone has learned during a specific course, study or program. Here the progress is significant and, therefore, is the main point tested.

Alderson (1996:219) posits that achievement tests are “more formal”, whereas Hughes (1989:8) assumes that this type of tests will fully involve teachers, for they will be responsible for the preparation of such tests and giving them to the learners. He repeats the dictionary defining the notion of achievement tests, adding just that success of the students, groups of students, or the courses.

Furthermore, Alderson (ibid.) conceives that achievement tests are mainly given at definite times of the school year. Moreover, they could be extremely crucial for the students, for they are intended either to make the students pass or fail the test.

At this instant the author of the paper is determined to compare a progress and achievement test. Again if we look at these two types they might seem similar, however, it is not so. Drawing on the facts listed above (see sub-chapter 2.3) we can report that a progress test is typically used during the course to check the acquisition of an excerpted material.
An achievement test checks the acquisition of the material, as well.
Although, it is far different in its application time. We basically use an achievement test at the end of the course to check the acquisition of the material covered during the study year, not bits of it as it is with a progress test.

Quoting Hughes (ibid.) we can differentiate between two kinds of achievement tests: final and progress tests. Final tests are the tests that are usually given at the end of the course in order to check the students’ achieved results and whether the objectives set at the beginning have been successfully reached. Further Hughes highlights that ministries of education, official examining boards, school administration and even the teachers themselves design these tests. The tests are based on the curriculum and the course that has been studied. We assume, that is a well- known fact that teachers usually are responsible for composing such tests, and it requires a careful work.

Alternatively, Alderson (ibid.) mentions two usage types of achievement tests: formative and summative. The notion of a formative test denotes the idea that the teacher will be able after evaluating the results of the test reconsider his/her teaching, syllabus design and even slow down the pace of studying to consolidate the material if it is necessary in future. Notwithstanding, these reconsiderations will not affect the present students who have taken the test. They will be applied to the future syllabus design.

Summative usage will deal precisely with the students’ success or failure. The teacher will immediately can take up remedial activities to improve a situation.

Further, Alderson (ibid.) and Heaton (1990:14) stipulate that designing an achievement test is rather time-consuming, for the achievement test is basically devised to cover a broad topic of the material covered during the course. In addition, one and the same achievement test could be given to more than one class at school to check both the students’ progress and the teachers’ work. At that point it is very essential to consider the material covered by different classes or groups. You cannot ask the students what they have not been taught. Heaton (ibid.) emphasises the close cooperative work of the teachers as a crucial element in test design.
However, in the school the author of the paper used to work the teachers did not cooperate in designing achievement tests. Each teacher was free to write the test that best suits his/her children.

Developing the topic, we can focus on Hughes’ idea that there is an approach how to design a test; it is called syllabus-content approach. The test is based on a syllabus studied or a book taken during the course. This test could be described as a fair test, for it focuses mainly on the detailed material that the students are supposed to have studied. Hughes
(ibid.) points out that if the test is inappropriately designed, it could result in unsuccessful accomplishment of it. Sometimes the demands of the test may differ from the objectives of the course. Therefore, the test should be based directly on the objectives of the course. Consequently, it will influence the choice of books appropriate to the syllable and syllable itself. The backwash will be positive not only for the test, but also for the teaching. Furthermore, we should mention that the students have to know the criteria according to which they are going to be evaluated.

To conclude we shall state again that achievement tests are meant to check the mastery of the material covered by the learners. They will be great helpers for the teacher’s future work and will contribute a lot to the students’ progress.

3.5 Proficiency tests

The last type of test to be discussed is a proficiency test. Regarding
Longman Dictionary of LTAL (292) proficiency test is a test, which measures how much of a language a person knows or has learnt. It is not bound to any curriculum or syllabus, but is intended to check the learners’ language competence. Although, some preparation and administration was done before taking the test, the test’s results are what being focused on. The examples of such tests could be the American Testing of English as Foreign Language test (further in the text TOEFL) that is used to measures the learners’ general knowledge of English in order to allow them to enter any high educational establishments or to take up a job in the USA. Another proficiency test is Cambridge First Certificate test that has almost the same aim as TOEFL.

Hughes (1989:10) gives the similar definition of proficiency tests stressing that training is not the thing that is emphasised, but the language. He adds that ‘proficient’ in the case of proficiency tests means possessing a certain ability of using the language according to an appropriate purpose. It denotes that the learner’s language ability could be tested in various fields or subjects (art, science, medicine, etc.) in order to check whether the learner could suit the demands of a specific field or not. This could refer to TOEFL tests. Apart from TOEFL we can speak about Cambridge First Certificate test, which is general and does not concern any specific field. The aim of this test is to reveal whether the learners’ language abilities have reached a certain standard set. The test could be taken by anyone who is interested in testing the level of language knowledge. There are special tests levels, which can be chosen by a candidate. If a candidate has passed the exam s/he can take another one of a different level. However, these entire tests are not free of charge, and in order to take it an individual has to pay for them.

Regarding Hughes (ibid.) who supposes that the only similar factor about such tests that they are not based on any courses, but are intended to measure the candidates’ suitability for a certain post or course at the university, we can add that in order to pass these tests a candidate has to attend special preparatory courses.

Moreover, Hughes (ibid.) believes that the proficiency tests affect learners’ more in negative way, than in positive one.

The author of the paper both agrees and does not agree with the
Hughes’ proposed statement. Definitely, this test could make the testee depressed and exhausted by taking a rather long test. Moreover, the proficiency tests are rather impartial; they are not testee-friendly.

However, there is a useful factor amongst the negative ones. It is preparation to proficiency tests, for it involves all language material starting from grammar finishing with listening comprehension. All four skills are being practised during the preparation course; various reading task and activities have been incorporated; writing has been stressed focusing on all possible types of essays, letters, reviews, etc. Speaking has been practiced as well. The whole material has been consolidated for many times.

To summarize we can claim that there are different types of tests that serve for different purposes. Moreover, they all are necessary for the teacher’s work, for them, apart from a proficiency test, could contribute to successful material acquisition by learners.

Chapter 4

Ways of testing

In this chapter we will attempt to discuss various types of testing and if possible compare them. We will start with the most general ones and move to more specific and detailed ways of testing.

4.1 Direct and indirect testing

The first types of testing we are intended to discuss are direct and indirect testing. First, we will try to define each of them; secondly, we will endeavour to compare them.

We will commence our discussion with direct testing that according to
Hughes (1989:14) means the involvement of a skill that is supposed to be tested. The following view means that when applying the direct testing the teacher will be interested in testing a particular skill, e.g. if the aim of the test is to check listening comprehension, the students will be given a test that will check their listening skills, such as listening to the tape and doing the accompanying tasks. Such type of test will not engage testing of other skills. Hughes (ibid.) emphasises the importance of using authentic materials. Though, we stipulate that the teacher is free to decide him/herself what kind of material the students should be provided with. It the teacher’s aim is to teach the students to comprehend the real, native speech, s/he will apply the authentic material in teaching and later, logically, in tests. Developing the idea we can cite Bynom (2001:8) who assumes that direct testing introduces real-life language through authentic tasks. Consequently, it will lead to the usage of role-plays, summarising the general idea, providing the missing information, etc.
Moving further and analysing the statements made by the linguists (Bynom,
2001; Hughes,1989) we can posit the idea that direct testing will be task- oriented, effective and easy to manage if it tests such skills as writing or speaking. It could be explained by the fact that the tasks intended to check the skills mentioned above give us precise information about the learners’ abilities. Moreover, we can maintain that when testing writing the teacher demands the students to write a certain task, such as an essay, a composition or reproduction, and it will be precisely the point the teacher will be intended to check. There will be certain demands imposed on writing test; the teacher might be just interested in the students’ ability to produce the right layout of an essay without taking grammar into account, or, on the contrary, will be more concerned with grammatical and syntactical structures. What concerns testing speaking skills, here the author of the paper does not support the idea promoted by Bynom that it could be treated as direct testing. Definitely, you will have a certain task to involve your speaking skills; however, speaking is not possible without employment of listening skills. This in turn will generate the idea that apart from speaking skills the teacher will test the students’ ability to understand the speech s/he hears, thus involving speaking skills.

It is said that the advantages of direct testing is that it is intended to test some certain abilities, and preparation for that usually involves persistent practice of certain skills. Nevertheless, the skills tested are deprived from the authentic situation that later may cause difficulties for the students in using them.

Now we can shift to another notion — indirect testing. It differs from direct one in the way that it measures a skill through some other skill. It could mean the incorporation of various skills that are connected with each other, e.g. listening and speaking skills.

Indirect testing, regarding to Hughes, tests the usage of the language in real-life situation. Moreover, it suits all situations; whereas direct testing is bound to certain tasks intended to check a certain skill. Hughes
(ibid.) assumes that indirect testing is more effective than direct one, for it covers a broader part of the language. It denotes that the learners are not constrained to one particular skill and a relevant exercise. They are free to elaborate all four skills; what is checked is their ability to operate with those skills and apply them in various, even unpredictable situations. This is the true indicator of the learner’s real knowledge of the language.

Indirect testing has more advantages that disadvantages, although the only drawback according to Hughes is that such type of testing is difficult to evaluate. It could be frustrating what to check and how to check; whether grammar should be evaluated higher, than composition structure or vice versa. The author of the paper agrees with that, however, basing on her experience at school again, she must claim that it is not so easy to apply indirect testing. This could be rather time-consuming, for it is a well-known fact that the duration of the class is just forty minutes; moreover, it is rather complicated to construct indirect test – it demands a lot of work, but our teachers are usually overloaded with a variety of other duties. Thus, we can only hope on the course books that supply us with a variety of activities that involve cooperation of all four skills.

4.2 Discrete point and integrative testing

Having discussed the kinds of testing that deal with general aspects, such as certain skills and variety of skills in cooperation, we can come to the more detailed types as discrete point and integrative testing.
According to Longman Dictionary of LTAL (112), discrete point test is a language test that is meant to test a particular language item, e.g. tenses. The basis of that type of tests is that we can test components of the language (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling) and language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) separately. We can declare that discrete point test is a common test used by the teachers in our schools. Having studied a grammar topic or new vocabulary, having practiced it a great deal, the teacher basically gives a test based on the covered material. This test usually includes the items that were studied and will never display anything else from a far different field. The same will concern the language skills; if the teacher’ aim is to check reading skills; the other skills will be neglected. The author of the paper had used such types of tests herself, especially after a definite grammar topic was studied. She had to construct the tests herself basing on the examples displayed in various grammar books. It was usually gap-filling exercises, multiple choice items or cloze tests. Sometimes a creative work was offered, where the students had to write a story involving a certain grammar theme that was being checked. According to her observance, the students who studied hard were able to complete them successfully, though there were the cases when the students failed. Now having discussed the theory on validity, reliability and types of testing, it is even more difficult to realize who was really to blame for the test failures: either the tests were wrongly designed or there was a problem in teaching.
Notwithstanding, this type was and still remains to be the most general and acceptable type in schools of our country, for it is easy to design, it concerns a certain aspect of the language and is easy to score. If we speak about types of tests we can say that this way of testing refers more to a progress test (You can see the examples of such type of test in Appendix
2).

Nevertheless, according to Bynom (2001:8) there is a certain drawback of discrete point testing, for it tests only separated parts, but does not show us the whole language. It is true, if our aim is to incorporate the whole language. Though, if we are to check the exact material the students were supposed to learn, then why not use it.

Discussing further, we have come to integrative tests. According to
Longman Dictionary of LTAL, the integrative test intends to check several language skills and language components together or simultaneously. Hughes
(1989:15) stipulates that the integrative tests display the learners’ knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, spelling together, but not as separate skills or items.

Alderson (1996:219) poses that, by and large, most teachers prefer using integrative testing to discrete point type. He explains the fact that basically the teachers either have no enough of spare time to check a certain split item being tested or the purpose of the test is only considered to view the whole material. Moreover, some language skills such as reading do not require the precise investigation of the students’ abilities whether they can cope with definite fragments of the text or not.
We can render the prior statements as the idea that the teachers are mostly concerned with general language knowledge, but not with bits and pieces of it. The separate items usually are not capable of showing the real state of the students’ knowledge. What concerns the author of the paper, she finds integrative testing very useful, though more habitual one she believes to be discrete point test. She assumes that the teacher should incorporate both types of testing for effective evaluation of the students’ true language abilities.

4.3 Criterion-referenced and norm referenced testing

The next types of testing to be discussed are criterion-referenced and norm referenced testing. They are not focused directly on the language items, but on the scores the students can get. Again we should concern
Longman Dictionary of LTAL (17) that states that criterion-referenced test measures the knowledge of the students according to set standards or criteria. This means that there will be certain criteria according to which the students will be assessed. There will be various criteria for different levels of the students’ language knowledge. Here the aim of testing is not to compare the results of the students. It is connected with the learners’ knowledge of the subject. As Hughes (1989:16) puts it the criterion- referenced tests check the actual language abilities of the students. They distinguish the weak and strong points of the students. The students either manage to pass the test or fail it. However, they never feel better or worse than their classmates, for the progress is focused and checked. At this point we can speak about the centralized exams at the end of the twelfth and ninth form. As far as the author of the paper is concerned, the results of the exams are confident, and the learners after passing the exams are conferred with various levels relevant to their language ability.
Apart from that, once a year in Latvian schools the students are given tests designed by the officials of the Ministry of Education to check the level of the students and, what is most important, the work of the teacher.
They call them diagnostic tests, though according to the material discussed above it is rather arguable. Nevertheless, we can accept the fact that criterion-referenced testing could be used in the form of diagnostic tests.

Advancing further, we have come to norm-referenced test that measures the knowledge of the learner and compares it with the knowledge of another member of his/her group. The learner’s score is compared with the scores of the other students. According to Hughes (ibid.), this type of test does not show us what exactly the student knows. Therefore, we presume that the best test format for the following type of testing could be a placement test, for it concerns the students’ placement and division according to their knowledge of the foreign language. There the score is vital, as well.

4.4 Objective and subjective testing

It worth mentioning that apart from scoring and testing the learners’ abilities another essential role could be devoted to indirect factors that influence evaluating. These are objective and subjective issues in testing.
According to Hughes (1989:19), the difference between these two types is the way of scoring and presence or absence of the examiner’s judgement. If there is not any judgement, the test is objective. On the contrary, the subjective test involves personal judgement of the examiner. The author of the paper sees it as when testing the students objectively, the teacher usually checks just the knowledge of the topic. Whereas, testing subjectively could imply the teacher’s ideas and judgements. This could be encountered during speaking test where the student can produce either positive or negative impression on the teacher. Moreover, the teacher’s impression and his/her knowledge of the students’ true abilities can seriously influence assessing process. For example, the student has failed the test; however, the teacher knows the true abilities of the student and, therefore, s/he will assess the work of that student differently taking all the factors into account.

4.5 Communicative language testing

Referring to Bynom (ibid.), this type of testing has become popular since 1970-80s. It involves the knowledge of grammar and how it could be applied in written and oral language; the knowledge when to speak and what to say in an appropriate situation; knowledge of verbal and non-verbal communication. All these types of knowledge should be successfully used in a situation. It bases on the functional use of the language. Moreover, communicative language testing helps the learners feel themselves in real- life situation and acquire the relevant language.

Weir (1990:7) stipulates that the current type of testing tests exactly the “performance” of communication. Further, he develops the idea of “competence” due to the fact that an individual usually acts in a variety of situations. Afterwards, reconsidering Bachman’s idea he comes with another notion – ‘communicative language ability’.

Weir (1990:10-11) assumes that in order to work out a good communicative language test we have to bear in mind the issue of precision: both the skills and performance should be accurate. Besides, their collaboration is vital for the students’ placement in the so-called ‘real life situation’. However, without a context the communicative language test would not function. The context should be as closer to the real life as possible. It is required in order to help the student feel him/herself in the natural environment. Furthermore, Weir (ibid.) stresses that language
‘fades’ if deprived of the context.

Weir (ibid., p.11) says: “to measure language proficiency adequately in each situation, account must be taken of: where, when, how, with whom, and why the language is to be used, and on what topics, and with what effect.” Moreover, Weirs (ibid.) emphasises the crucial role of the schemata (prior knowledge) in the communicative language tests.

The tasks used in the communicative language testing should be authentic and ‘direct’ in order the student will be able to perform as it is done in everyday life.

According to Weir (ibid.), the students have to be ready to speak in any situation; they have to be ready to discuss some topics in groups and be able to overcome difficulties met in the natural environment. Therefore, the tests of this type are never simplified, but are given as they could be encountered in the surroundings of the native speaker. Moreover, the student has to possess some communicative skills, that is how to behave in a certain situation, how to apply body language, etc.

Finally, we can repeat that communicative language testing involves the learner’s ability to operate with the language s/he knows and apply it in a certain situation s/he is placed in. S/he should be capable of behaving in real-life situation with confidence and be ready to supply the information required by a certain situation. Thereof, we can speak about communicative language testing as a testing of the student’s ability to behave him/herself, as he or she would do in everyday life. We evaluate their performance.

To conclude we will repeat that there are different types testing used in the language teaching: discreet point and integrative testing, direct and indirect testing, etc. All of them are vital for testing the students.

Chapter 5
Testing the Language Skills

In this chapter we will attempt to examine the various elements or formats of tests that could be applied for testing of four language skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking. First, we will look at multiple- choice tests, after that we will come to cloze tests and gap filling, then to dictations and so on. Ultimately, we will attempt to draw a parallel between them and the skills they could be used for.

5.1 Multiple choice tests

It is not surprising why we have started exactly with multiple-choice tests (MCQs, further in the text). To the author’s concern these tests are widely used by teachers in their teaching practice, and, moreover, are favoured by the students (Here the author has been supported by the equivalent idea of Alderson (1996:222)). Heaton (1990:79) believes that multiple-choice questions are basically employed to test vocabulary.
However, we can argue with the statement, for the multiple choice tests could be successfully used for testing grammar, as well as for testing listening or reading skills.

It is a well-known fact how a multiple-choice test looks like:

1. —- not until the invention of the camera that artists correctly painted horses racing.

A) There was

B) It was

C) There

D) It

“Cambridge Preparation for the TOEFL Test”:

A task basically is represented by a number of sentences, which should be provided with the right variant, that, in its turn, is usually given below. Furthermore, apart from the right variant the students are offered a set of distractors, which are normally introduced in order to “deceive” the learner. If the student knows the material that is being tested, s/he will spot the right variant, supply it and successfully accomplish the task. The distractors, or wrong words, basically slightly differ from the correct variant and sometimes are even funny. Nevertheless, very often they could be represented by the synonyms of the correct answer whose differences are known to those who encounter the language more frequently as their job or study field. In that case they could be hardly differentiated, and the students are frustrated. Certainly, the following cases could be implied when teaching vocabulary, and, consequently, will demand the students’ ability to use the right synonym. The author of the paper had given the multiple-choice tests to her students and must confess that despite difficulties in preparing them, the students found them easier to do. They motivated their favour for them as it was rather convenient for them to find the right variant, definitely if they knew what to look for. We presume that such test format as if motivated the learners and supplied them additional support that they were deprived during the test where nobody could hope for the teacher’s help.

Everything mentioned above has raised the author’s interest in the theory on multiple-choice test format and, therefore, she finds extremely useful the following list of advantages and disadvantages generated by
Weir. He (1990:43) lists four advantages and six disadvantages of the multiple-choice questions test. Let us look at the advantages first:

. According to Weir, the multiple-choice questions are structured in such a form that there is no possibility for the teacher or as he places “marker” to apply his/her personal attitude to the marking process.

The author of the paper finds it to be very significant, for employing the test of this format we see only what the student knows or does not know; the teacher cannot raise or lower the marker basing on the students’ additional ideas displayed in the work. Furthermore, the teacher, though knowing the strong and weak points of his/her students, cannot apply this information as well to influence the mark. What s/he gets are the pure facts of the students’ knowledge.

Another advantage is:

. The usage of pre-test that could be helpful for stating the level of difficulty of the examples and the test in the whole. That will reduce the probability of the test being inadequate or too complicated both for completing and marking.

This could mean that the teacher can ensure his/her students and him/herself against failures. For this purposes s/he just has to test the multiple-choice test to avoid troubles connected with its inadequacy that later can lead to the disaster for the students receiving bad marks due to the fact that the test’s examples were too complicated or too ambiguous.

The next advantage concerns the format of the test that clearly implies the idea of what the learner should do. The instructions are clear, unambiguous. The students know what they are expected to do and do not waste their precious time on trying to figure out what they are supposed to do.

The last advantage displayed by Weir is that the MCQs in a certain context are better than open-ended or short-answer questions, for the learners are not required to produce their writing skills. This eliminates the students’ fear of mistakes they can make while writing; moreover, the task does not demand any creative activity, but only checks the exact knowledge of the material.

Having considered the advantages of MCQs, it is worth speaking about its disadvantages. We will not present all of them only what we find of the utmost interest and value for us.

The first disadvantage concerns the students’ guessing the answers; therefore, we cannot objectively judge his/her true knowledge of the topic.
We are not able to see whether the student knows the material or have just luckily ticked or circled the right variant. Therefore, it could be connected with another shortcoming of the following test format that while scoring the teacher will not get the right and true picture of what the students really know.

Another interesting point that could be mentioned it that multiple- choice differ from the real-life situation by the choice of alternatives.
Usually, in our everyday life we have to choose between two alternatives, whereas the multiple-choice testing might confuse the learner by the examples s/he even has not thought about. That will definitely lead to frustration, and, consequently, to the student’s failure to accomplish the task successfully.

Besides, regarding Weir (ibid.) who quotes Heaton (1975) we can stipulate that in some cases multiple-choice tests are not adequate and it is better to use open-ended questions to avoid the pro-long lists of multiple-choice items. This probably will concern the subject, which will require a more precise description and explanation from the students’ side.

To finish up with the drawbacks of MCQs we can declare that they are relatively costly and time-consuming to prepare. The test designer should carefully select and analyse each item to be included in the test to avoid ambiguity and imprecision. Furthermore, s/he should check all possible grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes, evaluate the quality of information offered for the learners’ tasks and choose the correct and relevant distractors for the students not to confuse them during the test.

To conclude we can cite Heaton (1990:17) who stipulates that designing a multiple-choice items test is not so fearful and hard as many teachers think. The only thing you need is practice accompanied by a bit of theory.
He suggests for an inexperienced teacher to use not more than three options if the teacher encounters certain difficulties in supplying more examples for the distractors. The options should be grammatically correct and of equal length. Moreover, the context should be appropriate to illustrate an example and make the student guess right.

5.2 Short answer tests

A further format that is worth mentioning is short answer test format. According to Alderson (1996:223) short answer tests could be substitutes to multiple-choice tests. The only difference is that apart from the optional answers the students will have to provide short answers.
The author of the paper had not used this test format, thus, she cannot draw on her experience. Therefore, she will just list the ideas produced by other linguists, to be more exact Alderson’s suggestions.

Alderson (ibid.) believes that short answer tests will contribute to the students’ results, for they will be able to support their answers and, if necessary, clarify why they responded in that way but not the other. It could be explained that the students will have an opportunity to prove their answers and support them if necessary.

Nevertheless, the short answer tests are relatively complicated for the teacher to be designed. The teacher has to consider a variety of ideas and thoughts to create a fairy relevant test with fairly relevant items.
May be that could explain the fact why this test format is not such a common occasion as MCQs are.

At this point we have come to advantages and drawbacks of short answer tests. Weir (1990:44) says that this type of testing differs from
MCQs by the absence of the answers. The students have to provide the answer themselves. That will give the marker the clear idea whether the students know what they write about or not. Certainly, the teacher will be definite about the students’ knowledge, whereas in MCQs s/he can doubt whether the students know or have just guessed the correct answer. Moreover, short answer test could make the students apply their various language skills techniques they use while dealing with any reading, listening or speaking activity.

Finally, Weir (ibid.) stipulates that if the questions are well formulated, there is a high chance the student will supply short, well- formulated answer. Therefore, a variety of questions could be included in the test to cover a broader field of the student’s knowledge, and certainly it will require a great work from the teacher.

Nevertheless, there are certain drawbacks displayed by the following test format. One of the major disadvantages could be the students’ involvement in writing. For if we are determined to check the students reading abilities, it is not appropriate to give the students writing tasks due to the high possibility of the spelling and grammar mistakes that may occur during the process. Therefore, we have to decide upon our priorities
– what do we want to test. Furthermore, the students while writing can produce far different answers than expected. It will be rather complicated to decide whether to consider them as mistakes or not.

5.3 The cloze test and gap-filling tests

Before coming to the theory on cloze tests we assume that it is necessary for us to speak about a term “cloze”. Weir (1990:46) informs that it was coined by W.L. Taylor (1953) from the word ‘closure’ and meant the individual’s ability to complete a model.

However, to follow the model one has to posses certain skills to do so. Hence, we can speak about introduction of such skill that Weir calls deduction. Deduction is an important aspect for dealing with anything that is unknown and unfamiliar. Thus, before giving a cloze test the teacher has to be certain whether his/her students are familiar with the deduction technique.

Alderson (1996:224) assumes that there are two cloze test techniques: pseudo-random and rational cloze technique. In the pseudo-random test the test designer deletes words at a definite rate, or as Heaton (1990:19) places it, systematically, for example every 7th word should be deleted occasionally with the initiate letter of the omitting word left as a prompt:

Although you may think of Britain as England ,i…is really four countries in one. There a.. …..four very distinct nations within the
British I………: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, each with their o…..unique culture, history, cuisine, literature a…..even languages.

(Discovering Britain, Pavlockij B.

M., 2000)

However, the task could be more demanding if the teacher will not assist the learners’ guesses and will not provide any hints:

Scotland is in the north and Wales in the west were………separate countries. They have different customs,……………….., language and, in Scotland’ s case, different legal and educational……………….

(ibid.)

The examples shown above do not yield to be ideal examples at all.
Without doubt, the material used in the task should more or less provide the students with the appropriate clues to form correct guessing.
Notwithstanding, the author of the paper has used such tests in her practice and according to her observations; she can conclude that the tasks with the first letter left are highly motivating for the students and supply a lot of help for them. Moreover, having discussed the following test format the teacher has revealed that the students like it and receive a real pleasure if they are able to confirm their guess and find the right variant.

However, according to Alderson (ibid.), the teacher commonly does not intend to check a certain material by the cloze test. The main point here is the independence of the student and his/her ability to apply all the necessary techniques to fill in the blank spaces. Concerning the mentioned- above scholars, we have to agree that the following type of test is actually relatively challenging, for it demands vast language knowledge from the student. Heaton (ibid.) believes that each third or fourth deleted word can turn into the handicap for the learner due to the lack of prompting devices, such as collocations, prepositions, etc. Whereas, the removal of each ninth word may even lead to the exhausting reading process.

On the contrary, the rational cloze technique, or as it is usually called gap-filling, is based on the deletion of words connected with the topic the teacher wants or intends to check. At this time the teacher controls the procedure more than it is in the pseudo-random test discussed above. Moreover, s/he tries to delete every fifth or sixth word, but does it rather carefully not to distort the meaning and mislead the learner.
Besides, a significant factor in this type of testing is that the teacher removes exactly the main words that are supposed to be checked, i.e.:

Britain…….a deceptively large island and ……surrounded by some very beautiful coastline. The south of England has popular sandy beaches, especially in the west. But the coast in the south west Wales…..a unique coastal National Park. Its beaches…… great for sunbathing and the rock pools and cliffs ……..havens for wildlife. Up in Scotland, the striking white beaches of the west coast and islands……excellent places for explorative walks.

(Discovering Britain, Pavlockij B. M., 2000)

It is evident that the teacher’s aim by the help of the rational cloze test is to check the students’ knowledge of the Present simple of the verb
“to be”. Thereof, the cloze tests could be successfully used for testing grammar, as well.

We have come again to the point when we are going to mention the advantages and disadvantages of cloze and gap-filling testing coined by
Weir. Regarding Weir, there are more disadvantages than advantages in applying the cloze tests. He says that to design a cloze test is fairly easy, and they are easy to evaluate, and it is the best means to check reading comprehension. Concerning the drawbacks, we can emphasise that randomly removed words usually will act as distractors and will not be of true importance for the students to comprehend a message if, for example, it is a reading task.

Compared to the cloze test, gap filling is more material based, for it checks the students’ knowledge of a particular topic. Therefore, we can speak about the first advantage that is the learners will know exactly what they should insert. Moreover, the selectively deleted items allow focusing exactly on them and do not confuse the student.

The last what could be said about gap filling tests is that this technique limits us to check only a certain language skill, e.g. a vocabulary on different topics.

5.4 C-Tests

It is worth mentioning that in the 80s German school introduced an alternative to cloze test another type of testing – C-Tests. This test was based on the cloze test system; however, every second word there was deleted. It could seem quite a complicated type, though it is not.
According to Weir (1990:47) in this type every deleted word is partially preserved. Thus, the students, if they possess a fairly good knowledge of the language and can activate their schemata, or background knowledge of a topic or the world, they will succeed in completing the test. Such test format could look as follows:

Cats ha…. always been surro………by superstitions. In anc……Egypt ca….were cons……. sacred, but in medi…..Europe ma….. people beli…… cats we…. witches in disgu…… A popular supers……… about ca…. is that a blac…cat, cros… your pa… from left to rig…., will bri… you bad lu…. However, in some cult….. a black ca… is thought to be a go… omen rat… than a ba… one.

(First certificate Star, Luke

Prodromou, p.134)

Definitely there are advantages and disadvantages of the following test format. According to Weir, due to the frequency of the deleted items there is a great possibility to include more tested items in the test.
Moreover, this test is economical. However, despite all the advantages, the test can mislead the students as it is fragmented. The examples are deprived from the context that could be very helpful for the students’ guessing of the missing parts.

5.5 True/False items

This test format is familiar for all the teachers and students. Each reading task will always be followed with true/false activities that will intend to check the students’ comprehension of a text. The students will be offered a set of statements some of which are true and some are wrong, e.g.:

1. People went to see ‘Cats’ because of the story. T F

2. Lloyd Webber’s father helped his career. T F

3. Lloyd Webber comes from a musical family. T F

( Famous Britons, Michael

Dean)
They usually should be ticked, and in order to tick the correct variants the students have to be able to employ various guessing strategies.

According to Weir (1990:48), the advantage of such test is found in its applicability and suitability. One can write more true/false statements for a test and use them to check the students’ progress or achievement.
Furthermore, the current sort of testing could be more motivating for the students than a multiple-choice test. It will not make the students confused offering just one possibility than a multiple-choice test, which typically proposes more than one option to choose from. Moreover, it is easy to answer for the students and check for the teachers.

5.6 Dictation

Another test format that could be applied in the language classroom is dictation. We commonly use dictations to check spelling; nevertheless, it could be applied to test listening comprehension, as well. It is obvious that to dictate something we have either to speak or read. It means that while writing a dictation the student has to be able to perceive the spoken language efficiently enough to produce in on paper. For this purpose the student will require a variety of techniques such as schemata and its application, predictions, guessing and context clues, etc. Further, it also is constrained that dictation help the students develop their abilities to distinguish between phonemes, separate words and intonation. Besides, dictations function in spoken language; thereof the students have an opportunity to learn to understand the language through listening. To conclude what has been mentioned above we can agree with Weir (1990:49) that dictations will force the students to use the variety of skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing skills.

Heaton (1990:28) advises that to enable the students comprehend successfully, the teacher need to read carefully and clearly, however avoiding slow, word for word reading. Moreover, to allow the students to check what they have written the repetition will be required. The author of the paper when giving dictations to her students had encountered the need for repetition for a number of times. The following could be explained by many factors, such as the students are not able to perceive spoken speech through listening; they are not able to elaborate various guessing, inferring of the meaning techniques or their pace of writing is simply rather slow. Thus, we entirely support the next statement claimed by Heaton that it is wise after the first reading of a dictation to ask a set of comprehension questions to make the students aware of the general idea of a text. It will simplify the process of the understanding.

Notwithstanding, even an ideal variant will definitely contain some drawbacks. The same could be applied to dictations. First, to write a dictation, the student requires a good memory. S/he has to retain information they have heard in order to display it later; moreover, the information should be identical to the original. Therefore, we can claim that the student has to recognize at least seventy-eighty per cent of what has been dictated. In that case we short-term memory should be well developed.

Apart from memory, scoring could be problematic, as well. Weir
(1990:50) believes that is difficult to decide what to pay attention to: whether to evaluate spelling and grammar, or just perceived information.
Thus, the teacher has to work out a certain set of criteria, as we have already mentioned that in Chapter 1, the criteria s/he will be operating with. Besides, the students should be acquainted with it, as well.

In addition, Weir (ibid.) says that dictating is more efficient if it is recorded on the tape and is delivered by a native speaker. It could mean that the students will have a chance to fell themselves in the real-life situation; for this is the actual purpose they learn the language for. The following has been expanded by Heaton (ibid.) that speaking face to face with a speaker is even more beneficial, for we can compensate the lack of understanding by his/her facial expression, gestures and movements.
Listening to a cassette does not provide us with such a chance, and therefore, it is more challenging and requires more developed skills to understand a recorded message.

5.7 Listening Recall

This test format is specifically applied to testing listening skills.
It differs from a dictation that it supplies the students with a printed text. However, the text is given not as the complete script of the tape.
Certain words that carry the meaning load are deleted from a passage, and the students after listening to the tape are supposed to insert them.
Hence, it could be related to a gap-filling test. Here the cassette is usually played for two times; first, the students listen for information and attempt to insert the missing details. The second time allows them to add what they had failed to understand at the beginning. The author of the paper had not used that as a direct test format but as a while-listening activity during her classes. According to her scrutiny the students with more advanced language abilities were able to comprehend the texts immediately, whereas the weaker students sometimes could not manage to understand the message even listening for the tape for the third time. That again proves the significance of usage of pre-, while and post-listening activities in the language classroom. Weir (ibid.) states that such type of testing involves the students’ short-time memory, which they need to switch while listening to the tape.

According to Weir (ibid.), one of the advantages of listening recall is uncomplicated construction, administration and marking.

Nevertheless, there are several disadvantages, as well. There is a danger, that the students will read the passage before listening to the tape, thus we will not be able to evaluate exactly their listening skills.
The author of the current paper had encountered the similar situation, where the teacher warns the students not to read but just listen. However, they start reading immediately after receiving the text, even though the tape record being still turned off.

5.8 Testing Grammar Through Error-recognition Items and Word Formation
Tasks

One of the test formats for testing grammar is error-recognition items. Here the teacher writes sentences underlining various words. One of the words is obligatory wrong, and the students have to identify what word is wrong and should be corrected. Heaton (ibid.) introduces a variation of that type, saying that the teacher can supply the students with incorrect sentences asking the students to provide the right variant. This again demands a fairly good knowledge of the subject from the students to differentiate between the right and wrong variants. In that case the error- recognition format could be compared with multiple-choice format and even called a branch of it. Below you can find the example of error-recognition items format:

1. I can’t come to the phone – I have / I’m having a shower!

2. I watched/ I was watching TV when suddenly the telephone rang.

3. I had been waiting/ I had waited in the rain for ages when she finally turned up.

(First certificate Star, Luke

Prodromou, p.12)

Further, for testing grammar and language structures we often use word-formation tasks, e.g.:
Making friends and ………people is a gift that some influence
………….people seem to be born with, while for others it luck is a skill that has to be ……..through practice and acquire hard work. It is, however, …….to know that most skills, comfort particularly ………….skill, can be learnt and that it is never society too late to start improving.

(First certificate Star, Luke

Prodromou, p.41)

or
|verb |noun |person |Adjective |
|Invent | | | |
| | |discoverer |- |
| |creation | | |

It is frequently used in centralized exams to know the students’ ability to coin new words that displays the students’ advanced level of the language. The students are demanded coining nouns from verbs, adjectives from nouns, etc. This requires certain knowledge of prefixes, suffixes and roots in order to create a necessary word. Word coinage is an inevitable skill for recognizing new word items either.

5.9 Controlled writing

In order to check the students grammar and writing ability the teacher can use different test formats: transformation, broken sentences, sentence and paragraph completion, form filling, notes and diaries.

According to Heaton (1990:32), transformation deals with re-writing sentences. For example, the students are asked to change a sentence in
Active voice into a sentence in Passive voice. To differ the task the teacher can put the required word in brackets at the end of each sentence.
The students will need to transform a sentence to fit the word in brackets.
Or another example of transformation could be changing the focus of the sentence, e.g.:

1. Berlin is not an easy city to move about in.
Difficult
It………………………in Berlin.

2. I wonder if you could open the window.
Could
You couldn’t ………………….

3. When did you start to learn English?
Been
How…………………….English?

(First certificate Star, Luke

Prodromou, and p.40)

Further, he discusses the sentences that are divided into fragments
(he calls them broken sentences), and the student’s task is to arrange the words in order to produce correct examples. Thus, the students have to know grammar and syntaxes to make a right sentence with the correct word order.
Sometimes the students are asked to alter the words to make grammatically correct sentences, e.g.:

1. a German/hunting/huge/black dog

2. a 25-year-old/Opera/tall singer

3. a brand-new/plastic/shopping/green bag

4. an English/young/interesting teacher

(First certificate Star, Luke

Prodromou, and p.80)

Afterwards, the students can be asked to complete the whole paragraphs, finish dialogues, write diaries using the given information, and fill the form, for example hotel check-in. The author of the paper had used writing a diary in her 8th form, when the learners had to write the diary of captain’s wife whose husband disappeared in the sea. They also had to write the diary of the captain himself before the catastrophe. The students liked the task immensely.

5.10 Free writing

Heaton (ibid.) believes that the most suitable way to check the students’ writing skills is asking them to write a composition. The teacher can include a variety of testing criteria there depending on what is really being tested. The topics for a composition should be appropriate to the age of the students and respond to their interest. However, the teacher has to establish clearly what s/he is going to check (the material studied: e.g. grammar) and what could be neglected. The students have to know whether the teacher is interested in the context or may be s/he is concerned with grammar and spelling, as well.

5.11 Test Formats Used in Testing Speaking Skills

We are not going to deep into details of test formats used for testing speaking skills. Heaton (ibid.) displays that one of the most essential elements of testing speaking is pronunciation. To check how the students pronounce certain testing items the teacher may ask his/her students to read aloud and retell stories. Moreover, the teacher will receive the impression how well his/her students can operate with the spoken language.

Afterwards, the teachers can use pictures to test the students’ speaking skills. This is widely used task, and a lot of teachers use it to check the students speaking skills and the knowledge of the vocabulary.
Moreover, while describing the picture the student will have to imply the correct grammar and knowledge of the English sentence structure. The description could be done on the spot and does not require a lot of time for preparation, though Heaton (ibid.) stipulates that the teacher should ensure his/her students with a time during which they can formulate their ideas before presentation.

Apart from the pictures the students could be offered to describe a person if their topic is people’s appearance or jobs, stay the sequence of events basing on the provided information or pictures accompanying the task, spot differences between two pictures and compare them. Further,
Heaton (ibid.) displays a rather interesting task. The students receive a picture with speech bubbles. They are asked to write what they think people are saying. This in turn involves creativity from the students and could be assessed as an additional element and contribute to the students’ marks.
Definitely, each teacher will develop and give the students various tasks regarding the criteria and demands to be tested.

In conclusion we can say that the teacher can use a variety of test formats, such as multiple-choice questions, transfer of information; reordering the words, describe a picture, listening to the instructions to check the language skills of his/her students. Every teacher has to choose him/herself the tasks that will be appropriate to their way of teaching and the needs of the students.

Below we have attached the table of four language skills and test formats applicable for each skill.

| | |
|Language Skills |Test Formats |
| | |
|Reading skills |1 Multiple-choice items |
| |Short answers test |
| |Cloze test |
| |Gap-filling test |
| |False/true statement |
| | |
|Listening skills |Multiple-choice items |
| |False/true statements |
| |Gap-filling tests |
| |Dictations |
| |Listening recall |
| | |
|Writing skills |Dictations |
| |Compositions |
| |Reproductions |
| |Writing stories |
| |Writing diaries |
| |Filling-in forms |
| |Word formation |
| |Sentence transformation |
| | |
|Speaking skills |Retelling stories |
| |Describing pictures |
| |Describing people |
| |Spotting the differences |

Chapter 6

Analysis of the Test of English as a Foreign Language and Cambridge First
Certificate test according to test design criteria.

The present chapter deals with the practical part of the research. It will be based on the analysis and comparison of two proficiency tests formats TOEFL (The Test of English as a Foreign Language) test and CFC
(Cambridge First Certificate) test. We will start with the brief description of their overall features; afterwards we will make an attempt to contrast them and draw relevant conclusions.

The first test to be discussed is Cambridge First Certificate test. It will usually consist of five papers: reading with the duration time 1 hour and 15 minutes, writing -1 hour 30 minutes, use of English -1 hour 15 minutes, listening — 40 minutes and speaking approximately 14 minutes.
There is no absolute pass mark, but the candidates need to get about 60% of the total marks to pass with a Grade C (Prodromou, 1998:6-7).

TOEFL test is an examination that intends to evaluate the level of the
English language of a foreign speaker (Gear, 1996:3-4). Moreover, it is commonly one of the aspects included into the entrance exams of any university in the USA. The institution the person requires the test for could implement the demanded score here. Nevertheless, the highest score does not differ from that of the CFC. TOEFL test as CFC test consists of four different parts: listening comprehension that occupies approximately
35 minutes and consists of three parts, structure and written expression with time limit 25 minutes composed of two tasks and reading comprehension
– 55 minutes, consisting of several passages.

Here we can notice some differences between CFC and TOEFL tests: when
TOEFL test consists of just four parts, CFC includes a speaking part more.
Moreover, each part of each test will include a various range of tasks, i.e. each part TOEFL test will mainly be composed of two tasks, whereas
CFC will classically contain four different activities.

Doing the tests in both cases the students will get special answers sheets where they will have to mark the answers they think are the right ones. The instructions before the taking the test usually warn the participants not to write in the books with questions. Moreover, both tests are checked by the scoring machine, therefore the students should be aware of what type of marking the answers they have to use. In both cases it should be a black lead pencil for the scoring machine to read. The answers should not be circled or lightly marked; in TOEFL test the students are supposed to fill in an oval answer with a letter inside corresponding to the question, whereas in CFC the students will have to fill in a small rectangular under a certain letter. Together the two tests remind the participants to choose only one answer. If the student changes his/her mind and decides to choose another answer, s/he can easily rub out the previous answer.

We can call the both tests valid, for they test what is supposed to be tested and measured and they usually have the same format and length; regarding reliability, we cannot say exactly whether there is reliability or not, for if the student was not lucky for the first time taking the test, s/he can study hard and take the test again for the second time and, thus, score a better result.

Both of the tests involve the four skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing. The difference could be found in the sequence of them, for example if CFC test will start with reading first, TOEFL test will deal with listening. The types of tasks and activities implied in the test differ as well. We will start our analysis with reading part.

Reading Comprehension Part

CFC reading paper will test the students’ ability to read in a variety of ways: reading for gist (understanding of the text), reading for details, understanding how a text is organized and deducing the meaning from the context. (Typically, the students could be given four parts to fill)
(Prodromou, 1998:8). For that purpose CFC reading paper will offer the students multiple matching. The students will have to match headings or summary sentences to the parts of the text. They will have to show their ability to grasp the overall meaning of the text involving various kinds of knowledge such as morphological, semantic and syntactical one. For example:

Meet the Flinstones, a modern Stone Age family. From the town of Bedrock, here’s a bit about their history….
1. Somewhere in the world, every hour of every day, The Flinstones is being broadcast. An incredible 300 million fans tune in to watch it regularly.

Whether you like them or not, Fred, Wilma and their neighbours are impossible to avoid….
A) Rocky jokes B) A Stone Age family in skins C) A new idea D) A popular show, etc.

Prodromou, First Certificate Star,

1998

Thus, basing on the theory we have discussed in the first part of our paper, we can claim that it is integrative type of test, though being direct, that denotes testing one particular skill directly, but not through other language skills.

Afterwards, CFC may offer the students multiple choice, gapped texts and again multiple matching only connected with information. In multiple-choice activity the students will have to answer four-option multiple-choice questions about a text. For example:

Mad Cow Disease is a deadly illness of the brain and it is the non- technical term for BSE or Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis. This so difficult to say that journalists and even some doctors prefer the more vivid Mad Cow
Disease…
1. We use the expression Mad Cow Disease because
A) it is more accurate.
B) It is easier to say.
C) It links cows with people.
D) It sounds less scientific.

Prodromou, First Certificate Star,

1998

It is obvious that only one answer will be the right one, but the others will be distractors that will try to confuse the reader. It will limit the students and make them use a variety of reading strategies, knowledge of vocabulary and syntaxes to discover the right variant. However, the students will not have an opportunity to support their choices and prove why the answer they have chosen is the exact one. Moreover, the students will be checked whether they understand the general meaning of the text, its details, whether they can infer the meaning from the text and understand references (who refers who). Thus, we can declare that this type of test is integrative, for it involves the students’ abilities to apply various reading strategies and still direct, for it tests just reading skills.

The same could be said about gapped texts that will check the students’ knowledge of reading strategies, such as organization of the text, reading for gist, etc. (examples available in Appendix p.17) To complete it the students will have to show their knowledge of the certain areas of the language. Multiple matching will require the students to match pieces of information either with a certain text divided into fragments or with several texts joined together with one topic (examples available in
Appendix p.8).

CFC will display various types of texts in order to see how well the students can cope with any authentic material when dealing with reading.
They will have to show their capability of dealing with advertisements, letters, stories, travelling brochures, guides, manuals, and magazine and newspaper articles. The type of test applicable here will be integrative, including a variety of strategies and direct checking the students reading skills.

TOEFL test’s reading part usually involves the students’ general comprehension of a text. It is regularly a text followed by a number of questions about it typically in the form of multiple choice items format.
However, this part of the test requires the students to show their skills in reading for gist, the students have to define the main idea of a text; afterwards, the students will have to display their knowledge of the vocabulary, especially synonyms, ability to infer the meaning, define the words and apply their skills connected with working with references, i.e.:

….The biggest disadvantage was that the sound and pictures could become unsynchronised if, for example, the gramophone needle jumped or if the speed of the projector changed. This system was only effective for a single song or dialogue sequence…..

47. The word “sequence” in line 14 is closest in meaning to
A) interpretation
B) progression
C) distribution
D) organization

Gear, Cambridge preparation for the TOEFL test, 1996

The students will be offered to read several passages, usually historical, scientific, medical, etc. facts. They will intend to check the students’ ability to understand specific types of tests taken from specific fields, the skill required at the universities, whereas CFC will offer the students the texts they can encounter in their everyday life being abroad.
Each text will be typically accompanied with seven questions.

TOEFL test will chiefly use multiple-choice items; there will be no gap filling or matching implied. Thus, we can call a reading part of TOEFL test as a direct, for it tests the students reading skills, and more discrete point tests than integrative, for it is mainly concerned with checking the students’ knowledge of vocabulary (examples available in Appendix p.391-
396).

The above mentioned could be stated as the first difference: TOEFL test is a discreet point test, while CFC is integrative one.

Another difference between CFC and TOEFL reading part could be a variety of tasks given to test the students’ reading skills. CFC will mostly offer a great range of tasks (headings, summary, fragmented texts) and texts types, while TOEFL will not vary a lot.

Listening Part

The listening part of CFC test aims to test the students’ ability to listen and understand the gist, the main points, and specific information is to deduce meaning. TOEFL test will check whether the students are able to understand conversations and talks in English.

CFC test will offer the students a variety of activities in order to check whether the students can imply effective listening strategies to comprehend the message. It suggests the idea of the test being integrative, for it will focus on different means that could be used to deal with a listening task. For example, CFC offers multiple choices as a task
(examples available in Appendix p.37): the students listen to several short extracts that are taken from different contexts. They could be dialogues or monologues as well. The answer sheet will display the three answer items from which the students will have to choose the correct one. The task could ask the students to guess who the speaker is, where the action takes place, what the conversation is about and even it can include the question about the feelings and emotions of speakers that could be guessed from the contexts.

Afterwards, there will be another task – note taking or blank filling that will check the student’s ability to listen for gist and for details.
This type will demand the student’s capability to use his/her writing skills to put down information they will hear. They will have to be able to pick up the necessary information and retain it in their memory in order to fulfil the task (examples available in Appendix p.87).

Subsequently, a further task could engage multiple matching where the students will have to concentrate on a particular kind of information. This task could be displayed in the form of a dialogue or a monologue. The students will be given several answers with letters that should be inserted into the right box. However, there will always be one option that does not suit any question, the so-called distractor. Moreover, asking the students to complete a grid, i.e. advantages and disadvantages of anything, could expand the task, i.e. advantages and disadvantages of keeping a certain pet:

| |Advantages |Disadvantages |
|dog | | |
|cat | | |
|fish | | |

Prodromou, First Certificate Star,
1998

Moreover, the listening task could involve True/false activities where the students will have to listen to a dialogue or a monologue and react to it (examples available in Appendix). The students will have to display how well they have comprehended the message ticking the statements whether they are true or false. In spite of that, Yes/No questions could take place. We have been discussing them already in our theoretical part and mentioned that the so-called open-ended questions allow the students support their answers. Answering them, the students are having a chance to prove why they have chosen a certain answer, but not the other. Usually, if the students are aware of such a possibility, they fill more secure and motivated, for they can be certain that the examiner will be able to realize the students’ point. However, it is not a very appropriate type for such a test as CFC, for checking such tests will be rather time-consuming.

Listening part of the TOEFL test differs a lot from that of CFC, for it is fully based on the multiple-choice items that focus mainly on the understanding of the main idea of a message (examples available in Appendix p.379-384) The participants are exposed to a set of short dialogues that are accompanied with four answers, where three are usually distractors and the rest one is correct, i.e.:

(man) I think, I’ll have the curtains changed.

(woman) They are a bit worn.

(narrator) What does the woman mean?

A) She thinks every bit of change is important.
B) She wants to wear them.
C) She thinks they’ve been worn enough.
D) She thinks they’re in bad condition.

Gear, Cambridge preparation for the TOEFL test,

1996

The test implies the idea that to do it the students have to use a variety of listening strategies, but it is not directly aimed at it.
Whereas, the listening part of CFC test is structured so that the students would be able to display their listening skills and strategies, that are so useful for them to comprehend the real message in the real-life situation dealing with a native speaker.

Thus, we can distinguish certain similarities and differences, which we can encounter comparing them. They are both direct aiming at checking one exact skill; however, CFC is integrative, but TOEFL is discreet point test.
Moreover, the test formats differ as well. CFC is richer in activities, than TOEFL test, which offer the students just multiple-choice items test.

The author of the paper presumes that CFC listening part is more testee- friendly, while TOEFL listening part is more “reserved” and does not allow the students fill free, but alarmed.

Writing Part

Writing part of CFC test tests the students’ ability to write different types of writing texts. These could be transactional letters, simple letters, compositions, descriptions, reports, etc. Moreover, the students could be asked to write an opinion composition and even an article
(examples available in Appendix p.38).

Transactional letters are aimed at making somebody do something. Writing them, the students have to keep in mind that they are supposed to get a relevant answer.

There are different types of transactional letters, such as a letter of complaint, a letter of invitation, a letter asking for information and a letter describing something. The task requiring the students ability to write these letters will supply the students with necessary information, may be even pictures, and usually will ask for the students’ personal opinion. Moreover, the students have to be aware of the style that should be used depending on the requirements. Furthermore, the students will have to know how the letters are structured, for it will be the factor that will be evaluated as well.

Another writing task such as writing articles for a magazine will require the students to display their writing abilities, the knowledge of the vocabulary, the style and letter organization knowledge (examples available in Appendix 38).

Writing a report will be based on the students’ capability to gather facts and analyse them. It could involve a kind of a research work and knowledge how to express and link the ideas together (examples available in
Appendix 30).

Writing a narrative story will ask the creativity from the students to make it interesting and original. Again the students will have to be able to express and link their ideas to produce a meaningful text.

Opinion composition will involve the students’ abilities to state advantages and disadvantages of the topic being discussed, expressing own opinion, stating the problem and possible solutions of it and expansion on the topic analysing various aspects of a topic.

Another writing task could be a book review. The students will have to know how to plan and organize the review, giving brief information about an author and some essential details about a book. Moreover, personal opinion of the students will be required as well.

Thus, looking at the facts stated above we can declare that the writing part of CFC is purely integrative type of test, for it involves all possible written tasks and strategies that should be used to accomplish the tasks effectively. Furthermore, it will be a direct testing aimed at testing the students’ writing skills. The tasks and activities presented in this part of CFC reflect the students’ needs they may meet in a real-life situation, for every possible writing piece is given.

The writing part of TOEFL test will generally involve essay writing.
There will not be any letters or book reviews. The students will be given a topic that is typically a statement and they will have to expand it and write about it giving the facts, ideas and sometimes even a personal opinion, i.e.: “ If the earth to be saved from environmental catastrophe, we shall all have to make major changes in our lifestyles” (Gear, Cambridge preparation for the TOEFL test, 1996). This type of writing will focus on expressing ideas and their linking as well. To write a good essay the students will require the knowledge of the topic, or schemata, the knowledge of a relevant vocabulary, appropriate style and organization of the written text, i.e. thesis sentence, paragraphs, etc (examples available in Appendix p. 377 – 378).

Therefore, we can conclude that the writing part of TOEFL test could be called also an integrative type of test involving the range of strategies.
Moreover, it could be defined as direct testing, for it implies testing exactly the writing skill. Furthermore, it is totally based on the knowledge how to organize an essay with all necessary paragraphs, introductions and conclusions.

Use of English or Structure and Written Expressions

An import role in both tests is occupied by use of English or as it is called in TOEFL Structure and Written Expressions part. It aims at testing the students’ knowledge of grammar and vocabulary used in the English language.

CFC offers the students a range of various activities and task to be done during the testing time. They are multiple choice cloze, open cloze, key word transformations, error correction and word formation. Whereas, the usual procedure of the same part in TOEFL test will mostly include multiple- choice cloze and error correction.

The multiple choice cloze in CFC will usually be in the form of a gapped text followed by fifteen multiple questions with four options, as always the only one will be the correct. It will mostly be concerned with vocabulary items or grammar issues (examples available in Appendix p.44).
For example:

Robin Williams was creative and gifted from an early age. He was a/an
(1)_______________child and at school was always a (2)_____________pupil: he wrestled, ran cross-country and worked (3)_____________at his studies.

1. A imaginary B imaginative C fantastic D mythical

2. A classic B model C superior D spoilt

3. A quickly B easily C hard D fast

Prodromou, First Certificate Star,

1998

Open cloze will mostly be presented in the form of a text with several spaces, which the students will have to complete with an appropriate word.
It will imply the students’ knowledge of grammar and vocabulary and will involve the students’ ability to predict and guess from the context
(examples available in Appendix p.94). The task will be rather complicated, for it will not be a C-test type where the words to be inserted preserve the initial letter or letters to make the guessing process easier. In our case the students will have to know how the words and phrases are connected together, how the sentences are linked, and they will have to know the grammar forms and structures, so, for example, if they see have/has, they should immediately know that Present perfect is used. For example:

When you join the International Bird Society, your membership
(1)_____________ make a positive difference to birds everywhere – even if the only ones you see are the blue tits…..

Prodromou, First Certificate Star,

1998

Key word transformations will make the students alter the sentences structures, however preserving the entire meaning of them. They will have to complete a sentence with a given word; here the vocabulary and grammar will be of major interest again (examples available in Appendix p.86). The usual change will occur with phrasal verbs, active and passive voice, verbs and prepositions that go together, etc.:

1. I didn’t like the story and I didn’t like the actors. neither

I ______________________the actors.

Prodromou, First Certificate Star,

1998

Error correction will implement the students’ knowledge of grammar structures. The students will receive a passage in which they will have to find incorrect item and highlight it (examples available in Appendix p.55).
Such types of activities will usually include an extra or unnecessary word.
These words could be relative pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, etc. For example:

________ If you want to find out about someone’s personality, one way of to do it is to

________take a sample of their handwriting and analyse it; this is called by

________graphology. To do graphology properly, it is important to use fairly typical…..

Prodromou, First Certificate Star, 1998

Word formation will based on completing a text by making an appropriate word form from a word stem given, i.e. discover – discovery (examples available in Appendix p.104). This part will focus mainly on vocabulary, especially on word formation rules. Here the knowledge of suffixes and prefixes will be essential for the students. For example:

Who is mad? Cows or farmers?

Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis is a (1)___________ brain DEAD

Disorder found amongst cows. As this medical term is almost

(2) _________for the majority of ordinary people to say, the illness
POSSIBLE is (3)________known as Mad Cow Disease. POPULAR

Prodromou, First Certificate Star, 1998

Concerning TOEFL test, we might say that it is similar to CFC use of
English; however, it displays just several types of tasks. As we have already mentioned they are error correction and multiple choice cloze.
Multiple choice cloze typically consists of a range of statements in which there will be a certain grammar structure missing. It is usually based on grammar, than on vocabulary (examples available in Appendix p. 385 – 386).
The students will have to know how the subject and predicate go together, how the words and sentence parts are linked with each other. For example:

1. ———infinitely large number of undiscovered galaxies.
A) An
B) There are an
C) From an
D) Since there are

Gear, Cambridge preparation for the TOEFL test, 1996

Error correction will differ from that in CFC, for in TOEFL test we will have a statement with the underlined words that are supposed to be wrong.
The students will have to choose the correct variant (examples available in
Appendix p. 387 – 390). It will usually be based on the students’ knowledge of grammar items and word formation as well. For example:

Drying food by means of solar energy is ancient process applied wherever food and climate conditions

A B C D make it possible.

Gear, Cambridge preparation for the TOEFL test, 1996

In conclusion we can state that Use of English is both discreet and integrative type of testing, for in some tasks of CFC the knowledge of word formation is demanded, but in some grammar will be included either.

The Use of English of CFC and TOEFL will be a direct testing, for it will test the students’ grammar and vocabulary knowledge.

Speaking

Speaking is another part of the test that is present in CFC and is not included into TOEFL test. It could be explained by the fact that if the student passes TOEFL test successfully, s/he will be interviewed directly at the place s/he needed the test for.

Therefore, will briefly look at CFC speaking part and discuss it. It aims at the students’ ability to use spoken language effectively in different types of interaction. The students could be asked to give personal information, talk about pictures and photographs, be involved in pair work task or even in discussion.

In personal information part the students could be asked to supply the personal details about themselves: i.e. their job, family position, studies, etc.( examples available in Appendix 10 – 11).

In describing pictures or photographs they will have to share their opinion about them speaking with an examiner. There will be a time limit set for the talk.

In pair work task and discussion the students will be supplied either by pictures or photos or by charts and diagrams. They will be joined in pairs and will have to carry out the task together. It could be either the solving the problem, planning something, putting something in order or discussing a certain topic. Discussion will certainly require the students’ personal opinion and analysis of a topic (examples available in Appendix
63).

In CFC the students will have to cooperate with another interlocutor: either the examiner or another participant.

The author of the paper assume that this part is both integrative and indirect testing. It is integrative, for it will involve the students’ knowledge of the whole aspects of the language: grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, listening skills and may be even reading skills if the task will be written. To communicate successfully the students will require listening and comprehending the other speaker’s message to respond.
Grammar should be accurate to produce a good and correct dialogue or a monologue, for accuracy is an important factor there. The rich word stock will be inevitable element as well.

Indirect testing means that the whole material will be included while testing speaking skills.

To conclude we can declare that CFC and TOEFL tests are both integrative and discreet point tests. They are also direct, however, speaking part in
CFC could be defined as indirect one involving all four skills to be used.

Conclusions

The present research attempted to investigate the essence of two types of tests, such as TOEFL and CFC tests. The research has achieved the initially set goals and objectives. It dealt with the basic data about testing, where the author had displayed the ideas what was the essence of tests, why the students should be tested, what consequences could tests produce and whom they would mostly influence. Afterwards, the reasons for testing were discussed, where the author of the paper had gradually showed why tests were significant in the process of learning and the role of testing in the teaching process. After the basic data had been discussed, the author came directly to types of testing. At that point the author of the research made an attempt to review various sources on the topic she was able to find. She had presented the definitions of the types of tests offered in Longman dictionary of LTAL and then had compared them with the definitions given by various authors. Later, the author of the research displayed the ways of their applications and reasons for that. She had also presented several examples of tests types in the Appendix. The author of the paper had also discussed ways of testing, such as discrete point test and integrative test, objective and subjective tests, direct and indirect tests, etc. The attention was drawn to the significance of their usage and the purpose for it. Furthermore, the discussion had changed the focus on another important issue, such as tests formats and approaches for testing four language skills. Here the author had broadly and explicitly discussed and analysed the tests formats, such as MCQs, false/true items, cloze tests, gap-filling tests, etc. She had focused on their application and skills for which they are used. Moreover, she had displayed various examples to exemplify each test format, offering several of them in
Appendix of the paper. Likewise, a table with the language skills and test formats applicable for them was attached to the work as well. Further, a practical part in the form of the tests’ analysis was presented.

The author of the paper had also dealt with the main issues that are very vital and essential in analysis of the tests. She had focused on the reliability and validity of the tests and tried to trace them in TOEFL and
CFC tests. She had thoroughly discussed the tasks and activities composing the tests designed to test the students’ language skills. Moreover, she had attempted to compare the two tests and find out any similarities and differences between them. She had methodically studied each part of the tests, starting from reading skills finishing with speaking. She had presented a detailed investigation into the matter together with the examples that could be observed in Appendix, as well.

Eventually, she had gained her aim having checked the theory into practice and had proved that it really functioned in the real world.
Moreover, she had revealed that though being sometimes different in their purpose, design and structure, the TOEFL test and CFC test are constructed according to the universally accepted pattern.

Thus, the hypothesis of the present research has been confirmed.

Theses

1. The role of tests is very useful and important, especially in language learning, for they indicates how much the learners have learnt during a course, as well as display the strength and weaknesses of the teaching process and help the teacher improve it.

2. The tests can facilitate the students’ acquisition process and function as a tool to increase their motivation; however, too much of testing could be disastrous changing entirely the students’ attitude towards learning the language, especially if the results are usually dissatisfying.

3. Assessment and evaluation are important aspects for the teacher and the students and should be correlated in order to make evaluation and assessment “go hand in hand”.

4. The test should be valid and reliable. They should test what was taught, taking the learner’s individual pace into account. Moreover, the instructions of the test should be unambiguous.

5. Validity deals with what is tested and degree to which a test measures what is supposed to measure.

6. Reliability shows that the test’s results will be similar and will not change if one and the same test will be given on various days.

7. There are four traditional categories or types of tests: proficiency tests measuring how much of a language a person knows or has learnt; achievement tests measuring a language someone has learned during a specific course, study or program; diagnostic tests displaying the knowledge of the students or lack of it, and placement tests placing the students at an appropriate level in a programme or a course.

8. There are two important aspect direct and indirect testing. Direct testing means the involvement of a skill that is supposed to be tested, whereas indirect testing tests the usage of the language in real-life situation and is assumed to be more effective.

9. Discrete point test is a language test that is meant to test a particular language item, whereas the integrative test intends to check several language skills and language components together or simultaneously.

10. There are various tests formats, such as multiple-choice tasks, gap- filling tests, cloze tests, true/false statements, etc. used to check four language skills.

11. To enter any foreign university the students are supposed to take the

TOEFL or CFC tests. Besides, they can be taken to reveal the student’s level of the English language.

12. Serving for almost similar purpose, however being sometimes different in their design and structure, the TOEFL and CFC tests are usually constructed according to the accepted universal pattern.

Bibliography

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July. Issue Twenty
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Teacher’s Book. Level Two. Cambridge University Press.
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Student’s Book. Level Two. Cambridge University Press.
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(ed.), Methodology in TESOL. New York. Newbury House Publishers.
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Dictionary. Longman
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July
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Appendix

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………3

PART 1 WHAT IS THE GRAMMAR………………………………………4

The Importance of grammar………………………………………….….4

The Psychological Characteristic of Grammar Skills……………………4

The Content of Teaching grammar…………………………………….…6

PART 2 MAJOR METHODS AND PRINCIPLES ………………………….8

A Brief Review of the Major Methods of Foreign Language Teaching.…8

The Grammar Translation method…………………………………..…8

The Direct Method……………………………………………………..9

The Audiolingual Method……………………………………….……10

Grammar explanations as used in the major methods………..……….10

Some General Principles of Grammar Teaching……………………..….11

Conscious approach……………………………………………….…..11

Practical approach……………………………………………….…….12

Structural approach……………………………………………………12

Situational approach…………………………………………….….….13

Different approach…………………………………………………….13

PART 3 FURTHER POINTS FOR CONCIDERATION…………………….14

Introduction of new Material……………………………………………..14

Introducing new language structure…………………………….……..14

Types of context………………………………………………………………………….15

The presentation of structural form………………………………..…..15

A general model for introducing new language……………………….15

Teaching grammar patterns……………………………………………….16

Correction…………………………………………………………………18

The Most Common Difficulties in Assimilating English Grammar………20

PART 4 TYPES OF EXERCISES FOR THE ASSIMILATION OF GRAMMAR…………………………………….…………………………….21

Recognition exercises……………………………………………………21

Drill exercises………………………………………………..…………..21

Creative exercises………………………………………………………..23

Grammar tests……………………………………………..……………..24

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………..….…..25

LITERATURE…………………………………………………………….….26

ITRODUCTION

Language is the chief means by which the human personality expresses itself and fulfills its basic need for social interaction with other persons.

Robert Lado wrote that language functions owing to the language skills. A person who knows a language perfectly uses a thousand and one grammar lexical, phonetic rules when he is speaking. Language skills help us to choose different words and models in our speech.

It is clear that the term “grammar” has meant various things at various times and sometimes several things at one time. This plurality of meaning is characteristic of the present time and is the source of confusions in the discussion of grammar as part of the education of children. There have been taking place violent disputes on the subject of teaching grammar at school.

The ability to talk about the grammar of a language, to recite its rules, is also very different from ability to speak and understand a language or to read and write it. Those who can use a language are often unable to recite its rules, and those who can recite its rules can be unable to use it.

Grammar organizes the vocabulary and as a result we have sense units. There is a system of stereotypes, which organizes words into sentences. But what skill does grammar develop?

First of all it gives the ability to make up sentences correctly, to reproduce the text adequately. (The development of practical skills and habits)

The knowledge of the specific grammar structure helps pupils point out the differences between the mother tongue and the target language.

The knowledge of grammar develops abilities to abstract systematize plural facts.

The name of my work is “Teaching Grammar”. And the main aim is to clearly recognize how to teach grammar right.

PART 1 WHAT IS THE GRAMMAR

1.1 The Importance of Grammar in Learning a Foreign Language

To judge by the way some people speak, there is no place for grammar in the language course nowadays; yet it is, in reality, as important as it ever was exercise of correct grammar, if he is to attain any skill of effective use of the language, but he need not know consciously formulated rules to account to him for that he does unconsciously correctly.

In order to understand a language and to express oneself correctly one must assimilate the grammar mechanism of the language studied. Indeed, one may know all the words in a sentence and yet fail to understand it, if one does not see the relation between the words in the given sentence. And vice versa, a sentence may contain one, two, and more unknown words but if one has a good knowledge of the structure of the language one can easily guess the meaning of these words or at least find them in a dictionary.

No speaking is possible without the knowledge of grammar, without the forming of a grammar mechanism.

If learner has acquired such a mechanism, he can produce correct sentences in a foreign language. Paul Roberts writes: “Grammar is something that produces the sentences of a language. By something we mean a speaker of English. If you speak English natively, you have built into you rules of English grammar. In a sense, you are an English grammar. You possess, as an essential part of your being, a very complicated apparatus which enables you to produce infinitely many sentences, all English ones, including many that you have never specifically learned. Furthermore by applying you rule you can easily tell whether a sentence that you hear a grammatical English sentence or not.”

A command of English as is envisaged by the school syllabus cannot be ensured without the study of grammar. Pupils need grammar to be able to aud, speak, read, and write in the target language.

1.2 The Psychological characteristics of grammar skills

To develop one’s speech means to acquire essential patterns of speech and grammar patterns in particular. Children must use these items automatically during speech-practice. The automatic use of grammar items in our speech (oral and written) supposes mastering some particular skills – the skills of using grammar items to express one’s own thoughts, in other words to make up your sentences.

We must get so-called reproductive or active grammar skills.

A skill is treated as an automatic part of awareness. Automatization of the action is the main feature of a skill.

The nature of Automatization is characterized by that psychological structure of the action which adopts to the conditions of performing the action owing frequent experience. The action becomes more frequent, correct and accurate and the number of the operations is shortened while forming the skill the character of awareness of the action is changing, i.e. fullness of understanding is paid to the conditions and quality of performing to the control over it and regulation.

To form some skills is necessary to know that the process of the forming skills has some steps:

Only some definite elements of the action are automatic.

The Automatization occurs under more difficult conditions, when the child can’t concentrate his attention on one element of the action.

The whole structure of the action is improved and the automatization of its separate components is completed.

What features do the productive grammar skills have?

During our speech the reproductive grammar skills are formed together with lexis and intonation, they must express the speaker’s intentions.

The actions in the structural setting of the lexis must be learnt.

The characteristic feature of the reproductive grammar skills is their flexibility. It doesn’t depend on the level of Automatization, i.e. on perfection of skill here mean the original action: both the structure of sentence, and forms of the words are reproduced by the speaker using different lexical material. If the child reproduces sentences and different words, which have been learnt by him as “a ready-made thing” he can say that there is no grammar skill. Learning the ready-made forms, word combinations and sentences occurs in the same way as learning lexis.

The grammar skill is based on the general conclusion. The grammar action can and must occur only in the definite lexical limits, on the definite lexical material. If the pupil can make up his sentence frequently, accurately and correctly from the grammatical point of view, he has got the grammar skill.

Teaching grammar at school using the theoretical knowledge brought some critical and led to confusion. All the grammatical rules were considered to be evil and there were some steps to avoid using them at school.

But when we learn grammatical items in models we use substitution and such a type of training gets rid of grammar or “neutralizes” it. By the way, teaching the skills to make up sentences by analogy is a step on the way of forming grammar skills. It isn’t the lexical approach to grammar and it isn’t neutralization of grammar, but using basic sentences in order to use exercises by analogy and to reduce number of grammar rules when forming the reproductive grammar skills.

To form the reproductive grammar skills we must follow such steps:

Selection the model of sentence.

Selection the form of the word and formation of wordforms.

Selection the auxiliary words-preposition, articles, and etc. and their combination with principle words.

The main difficulty of the reproductive (active) grammar skills is to correspond the purposes of the statement, communicative approach (a questionиan answer and so on), words, meanings, expressed by the grammatical patterns. In that case we use basic sentences, in order to answer the definite situation. The main factor of the forming of the reproductive grammar skill is that pupils need to learn the lexis of the language. They need to learn the meanings of the words and how they are used. We must be sure that our pupils are aware of the vocabulary they need at their level and they can use the words in order to form their own sentence. Each sentence contains a grammar structure. The mastering the grammar skill lets pupils save time and strength, energy, which can give opportunity to create. Learning a number of sentences containing the same grammatical structure and a lot of words containing the same grammatical form isn’t rational. But the generalization of the grammar item can relieve the work of the mental activity and let the teacher speed up the work and the children realize creative activities.

The process of creation is connected with the mastering of some speech stereotypes the grammatical substrat is hidden in basic sentences. Grammar is presented as itself. Such a presentation of grammar has its advantage: the grammar patterns of the basic sentences are connected with each other. But this approach gives pupils the opportunity to realize the grammar item better. The teaching must be based on grammar explanations and grammar rules. Grammar rules are to be understood as a special way of expressing communicative activity. The reproductive grammar skills suppose to master the grammar actions which are necessary for expressing thoughts in oral and written forms.

The automatic perception of the text supposes the reader to identify the grammar form according to the formal features of words, word combinations, sentences which must be combined with the definite meaning. One must learn the rules in order to identify different grammatical forms. Pupils should get to know their features, the ways of expressing them in the language. We teach children to read and aud by means of grammar. It reveals the relation between words in the sentence. Grammar is of great important when one teaches reading and auding.

The forming of the perceptive grammar and reproductive skills is quite different. The steps of the work is mastering the reproductive skills differ from the steps in mastering the perceptive skills. To master the reproductive grammar skills one should study the basic sentences or models. To master the perceptive grammar skills one should identify and analyze the grammar item. Though training is of great importance to realize the grammar item.

1.3 The Content of Teaching Grammar

Before speaking about the selection of grammar material it is necessary to consider the concept “grammar”, i.e., what it meant by “grammar”.

By grammar one can mean adequate comprehension and correct usage of words in the act of communication, that is, intuitive knowledge of the grammar of the language. It is a set of reflexes enabling a person to communicate with his associates. Such knowledge is acquired by a child in the mother tongue before he goes to schools.

This “grammar” functions without the individual’s awareness of technical nomenclature; in other words, he has no idea of the system of the language, and to use all the word-endings for singular and plural, for tense, and all the other grammar rules without special grammar lessons only due to the abundance of auding and speaking. His young mind grasps the facts and “makes simple grammar rules” for arranging the words to express carious thoughts and feelings. This is true because sometimes little children make mistakes by using a common rule for words to which that rule cannot be applied. For example, a little English child might be heard to say Two mans comed instead of Two men come, because the child is using the plural “s” rule for man to which the rule does not apply, and the past tense ed rule for come which does not obey the ordinary rule for the past tense formation. A little Russian child can say ножов instead of ножей using the case-ending “ов” for ножи to which it does not apply. Such mistakes are corrected as the child grows older and learns more of his language.

By “grammar” we also mean the system of the language, the discovery and description of the nature of language itself. It is not a natural grammar, but a constructed one. There are several constructed grammars: traditional, structural, and transformational grammars. Traditional grammar studies the forms of words (morphology) and how they are put together in sentences (syntax); structural grammar studies structures of various levels of the language (morpheme level) and syntactic level; transformational grammar studies basic structures and transformation rules.

What we need is simplest and shortest grammar that meets the requirements of the school syllabus in foreign languages. This grammar must be simple enough to be grasped and held by any pupil. We cannot say that this problem has been solved.

Since graduates are expected to acquire language proficiency in aural comprehension, speaking and reading grammar material should be selected for the purpose. There exist principles of selecting grammar material both for teaching speaking knowledge (active minimum) and for teaching reading knowledge (passive minimum), the main one is the principle of frequency, i.e., how frequently this or that grammar item occurs. For example, the Present Simple (Indefinite) is frequently used both in conversation and in various texts. Therefore it should be included in the grammar minimum.

For selecting grammar material for reading the principle of polysemia, for instance, is of great importance.

Pupils should be taught to distinguish such grammar items which serve to express different meanings.

For example, -s (es) н

The selection of grammar material involves choosing the appropriate kind of linguistic description, i.e., the grammar which constitutes the best base for developing speech habits. Thus the school syllabus reflect a traditional approach to determining grammar material for foreign language teaching, pupils are given sentences patterns or structures, and through these structures they assimilate the English language, acquire grammar mechanisms of speech

The content of grammar teaching is disputable among teachers and methodologists, and there are various approaches to the problem, pupils should, whatever the content of the course, assimilate the ways of fitting words together to form sentences and be able to easily recognize grammar forms and structures while hearing and reading, to reproduce phrases and sentences stored up in their memory and say or write sentences of their own, using grammar items appropriate to the situation.

PART 2 MAJOR METHODS AND PRINCIPLES

1.1A Brief Review of the Major Methods of Foreign Language Teaching

The grammatical systems of Russian and English are fundamentally different. English is an analytical language, in which grammatical meaning in largely expressed through the use of additional words and by changes in word order. Russian is a synthetic language, in which the majority of grammatical forms are created through changes in the structure of words, by means of a developed system of prefixes, suffixes and ending. (p. 121, Brown C. and Jule “Teaching the spoken language”, Cambridge, 1983)

No one knows exactly how people learn languages although a great deal of research has been done into the subject.

Many methods have been proposed for the teaching of foreign language. And they have met with varying degrees of success and failure.

We should know that the method by which children are taught must have some effect on their motivation. If they find it deadly boring they will probably become de-motivated, whereas if they have confidence in the method they will find it motivating. Child learners differ from adult learners in many ways. Children are curious, their attention is of a shorter duration, they are quite differently motivated in, and their interests are less specialized. They need frequent of activity; they need activities which are exciting and stimulating their curiosity; they need to be involved in something active.

We shall examine such methods as “The Grammar – Translation Method”, ”The Direct Method”, “The Audio-lingual Method”. And we pay attention to the teaching grammar of the foreign language. We shall comment those methods, which have had a long history.

1.1.1 The Grammar Translation method will be discussed

This method was widely used in teaching the classics, namely Latin, and it was transferred to the teaching of modern languages when they were introduced into schools.

In the grammar-translation mode, the books begin with definitions of the parts of speech, declensions, conjugations, rules to be memorized, examples illustrating the rules, and exceptions. Often each unit has a paragraph to be translated into the target language and one to be translated into native one. These paragraphs illustrate the grammar rules studied in the unit. The student is expected to apply the rules on his own. This involves a complicated mental manipulation of the conjugations and declensions in the order memorized, down to the form that might fit the translation. As a result, students are unable to use the language, and they sometimes develop an inferiority complex about languages in general. Exceptionally bright and diligent students do learn languages by this method, or in spite of it, but they would learn with any method. (R. Lado)

We list the major characteristics of Grammar Translation.

Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target language.

Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.

Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.

Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often focuses on the form and inflection of word.

Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.

Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in grammatical analysis.

Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target language into the mother tongue.

Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.

(Brown H., Douglas ‘Principles of language teaching’, N.Y., 1987)

The grammar-translation method is largely discredited today. With greater interest in modern languages for communication the inadequacy of grammar-translation methods became evident.

1.1.2 The Direct Method

The Direct Method appeared as a reaction against the grammar-translation method.

There was a movement in Europe that emphasized language learning by direct contact with the foreign language in meaningful situations. This movement resulted in various individual methods with various names, such as new method, natural method, and even oral method, but they can all be referred to as direct methods or the direct method. In addition to emphasizing direct contact with the foreign language, the direct method usually deemphasized or eliminated translation and the memorization of conjugations, declensions, and rules, and in some cases it introduced phonetics and phonetic transcription.

The direct method assumed that learning a foreign language is the same as learning the mother tongue, that is, that exposing the student directly to the foreign language impresses it perfectly upon his mind. This is true only up to a point, since the psychology of learning a second language differs from that of learning the first. The child is forced to learn the first language because he has no other effective way to express his wants. In learning a second language this compulsion is largely missing, since the student knows that he can communicate through his native language when necessary.

The basic premise of Direct Method was that second language learning should be more like first language learning: lots of active oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language, no translation between first and second languages, and little or no analysis of grammatical rules. We can summarize the principles of the Direct

Method:

Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.

Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.

Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and student in small, intensive classes.

Grammar was taught inductively, i.e. the learner may discover the rules of grammar for himself after he has become acquainted with many examples.

New teaching points were introduced orally.

Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects, and pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.

Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.

Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.

1.1.3 The Audiolingual Method

The Audiolingual Method (It is also called Mimicry-memorization method) was the method developed in the Intensive Language Program. It was successful because of high motivation, intensive practice, small classes, and good models, in addition to linguistically sophisticated descriptions of the foreign language and its grammar.

Grammar is taught essentially as follows: Some basic sentences are memorized by imitation. Their meaning is given in normal expressions in the native language, and the students are not expected to translate word for word. When the basic sentences have been overlearned (completely memorized so that the student can rattle them off without effort), the student reads fairly extensive descriptive grammar statements in his native language, with examples in the target language and native language equivalents. He then listens to further conversational sentences for practice in listening. Finally, practices the dialogues using the basic sentences and combinations of their parts. When he can, he varies the dialogues within the material hr has already learned. The characteristics of ALM may be summed up in the following list:

New material is presented in dialog form.

There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases and overlearning.

Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a time.

Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.

There is a little or no grammatical explanation: grammar is taught by inductive analogy rather than deductive explanation.

Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.

There is much use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids.

Great importance is attached to pronunciation.

very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is permitted.

Successful responses are immediately reinforced.

There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances.

There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content.

1.1.4 Grammar explanations as used in the major methods

We shall briefly review the treatment of grammatical explanations by some of the major methods. This is not meant to be an exhaustive study of all available methods; rather it is an attempt to show the variety of ways in which different methods deal with grammar explanations and may help teachers in evaluating available materials.

Grammar translation is associated with formal rule statement. Learning proceeds, deductively, and the rule is generally stated by the teacher, in a textbook, or both. Traditional abstract grammatical terminology is used. Drills include translation into native language.

The direct method is characterized by meaningful practice and exclusion of the mother tongue. This method has had many interpretations, some of which include an analysis of structure, but generally without the use of abstract grammatical terminology.

The audio-lingual method stresses an inductive presentation with extensive pattern practice. Writing is discouraged in the early stages of learning a structure. Here again, there has bee considerable variation in the realization of this approach. In some cases, no grammatical explanation of any kind is offered. In other, the teacher might focus on a particular structure by isolating an example on the board, or through contrast. When grammatical explanation is offered it is usually done at the end of the lesson as a summary of behavior (Politzer, 1965), or in later versions of this method the rule might be stated in the middle of the lesson and followed by additional drills.

Each method is realized in techniques. By a technique we mean an individual way in doing something, in gaining a certain goal in teaching learning process. The method and techniques the teacher should use in teaching children of the primary school is the direct method, and various techniques which can develop pupils` listening comprehension and speaking. Pupils are given various exercises, connected with the situational use of words and sentence patterns.

1.2 Some General Principles of Grammar Teaching

1.2.1 Conscious approach

This means that in sentence patterns teaching points are determined so that pupils can concentrate their attention on some elements of the pattern to be able to use them as orienting points when speaking or writing the target language. For example, I can see a book. I can see many books.

The teacher draws pupils’ attention to the new element in the form of a rule, a very short one. It is usually done in the mother tongue. For example: Помни, что во множественном числе к существительному прибавляется окончание –s [s,z] или –es [IZ]. Or: Помни, что в отрицательных предложениях ставится вспомогательный глагол “do not” (“does not”).The rule helps the learner to understand and to assimilate the structural meaning of the elements. It ensures a conscious approach to learning. This approach provides favourable conditions for the speedy development of correct and more flexible language use. However it does not mean that the teacher should ask pupils to say this or that rule, Rules do not ensure the mastery of the language. They only help to attain the practical goal. If a pupil can recognize and employ correctly the forms that are appropriate, that is sufficient. When the learner can give ample proof of these abilities we may say that he has fulfilled the syllabus requirements.

Conscious learning is also ensured when a grammar item is contrasted with another grammar item which is usually confused. The contrast is brought out through oppositions. For example:

I get up at 7 o’clock.

It’s 7 o’clock. I am getting up.

He has come.

He came an hour ago.

Give me a book (to read into the train).

Give me the book (you have promised),

I like soup (more than any other food).

I like the soup ( you have cooked).

Rule for the teacher:

The teacher should realize difficulties the sentence pattern presents for his pupils. Comparative analysis of the grammar item in English and in Russian or within the English language may be helpful. He should think of the shortest and simplest way for presentation of the new grammar item. The teacher should remember the more he speaks about the language the less time is left to practice. The more the teacher explains the less his pupils understand what he is trying to explain, this leads to the teacher giving more information than is necessary, which does not help the pupils in the usage of this particular grammar item, only hinders them.

1.2.2 Practical approach

It means that pupils learn those grammar items which they need for immediate use either in oral or written language. For example, from the first steps of language learning pupils need the Possessive Case for objects which belong to different people, namely, Mike’s textbook, Ann’s mother, the girl’s doll, the boys’ room, etc. The teacher masters grammar through performing various exercises in using a given grammar item.

1.2.3 Structural approach

Grammar items are introduced and drilled in structures or sentence patterns.

It has been proved and accepted by the majority of teachers and methodologists that whenever the aim to teach pupils the command of the language, and speaking in particular, the structural approach meets the requirements.

Pupils are taught to understand English when spoken to and to speak it from the very beginning. This is possible provided they have learned sentence patterns and words as a pattern and they know how to adjust them to them to the situations they are given.

In our country the structural approach to the teaching of grammar attracted the attention of many teachers. As a result structural approach to grammar teaching has been adopted by our schools since it allows the pupil to make up sentences by analogy, to use the same pattern for various situations. Pupils learn sentence patterns and how to use them in oral and written language.

Rule for the teacher:

The teacher should furnish pupils with words to change the lexical (semantic) meaning of the sentence pattern so that pupils will be able to use it in different situations. He should assimilate the grammar mechanism involved in sentence pattern and not the sentence itself.

1.2.4 Situational approach

Pupils learn a grammar item used in situations. For example, the Possessive Case may be effectively introduced in classroom situations. The teacher takes or simply touches various things and says This is Nina’s pen; That is Sasha’s exercise-book, and so on.

Rule for the teacher:

The teacher should select the situations for the particular grammar item he is going to present. He should look through the textbook and other teaching materials and find those situations which can ensure comprehension and the usage of the item.

1.2.5 Different approach

Grammar items pupils need for conversation are taught by the oral approach, i.e., pupils aud them, perform various oral exercises, finally see them printed, and write sentences using them.

For example, pupils need the Present Progressive for conversation. They listen to sentences with the verbs in the Present Progressive spoken by the teacher or the speaker (when a tape recorder is used) and relate them to the situations suggested. Then pupils use the verbs in the Present Progressive in various oral sentences in which the Present Progressive is used. Grammar items necessary for reading are taught through reading.

Rule for the teachers:

If the grammar item the teacher is going to present belongs to those pupils need for conversation, he should select the oral approach method for teaching.

If pupils need the grammar item for reading, the teacher should start with reading and writing sentences in which the grammar item occurs.

While preparing for the lesson at which a new grammar item should be introduced, the teacher must realize the difficulties pupils will meet in assimilating this new element of the English grammar. They may be of three kinds: difficulties in form, meaning, and usage. The teacher thinks of the ways to overcome these difficulties: how to convey the meaning of the grammar item either through situations or with the help of the mother tongue; what rule should be used; what exercises should be done; their types and number. Then he thinks of the sequence in which pupils should work to overcome these difficulties, i.e., , from observation and comprehension through conscious imitation to usage in conversation (communicative exercises). Then the teacher considers the form in which he presents the grammar item – orally, in writing, or in reading. And, finally, the teacher plans pupils’ activity while they are learning this grammar item (point): their individual work, mass work, work in unison, and work in pairs, always bearing in mind that for assimilation pupils need examples of the sentence pattern in which this grammar item occurs.

PART 3 FURTHER POINTS FOR CONCIDERATION

1.1 Introduction of new Material

1.1.1 Introducing new language structure

We will consider ways in which children can be introduced to new language structure.

When we present grammar through structural patterns we tend to give students tidy pieces of language to work with We introduce grammar, which can easily be explained and presented. There are many different ways of doing this, which do not (only) involve the transmission of grammar rules.

It is certainly possible to teach aspects of grammar — indeed that is what language teachers have been doing for centuries — but language is a difficult business and it is often used very inventively by its speakers, In other words real language use is often very untidy and cannot be automatically reduced to simple grammar patterns. Students need to be aware of this, just as they need to be aware of all language possibilities. Such awareness does not mean that they have to be taught each variation and linguistic twist, however. It just means that they have to be aware of language and how it is used. That is why reading and listening are so important, and that is why discovery activities are so valuable since by asking students to discover ways in which language is used we help to raise their awareness about the creative use of grammar — amongst other things.

As teachers we should be prepared to use a variety of techniques to help our students learn and acquire grammar. Sometimes this involves teaching grammar rules; sometimes it means allowing students to discover the rules for themselves.

What do we introduce? Our job at this stage of the lesson is to present the pupils with clear information about the language they are learning. We must also show them what the language means and how it is used; we must also show them what the grammatical form of the new language is, and how it is said and/or written.

What we are suggesting here is that students need to get an idea of how his new language is used by native speakers and the best way of doing this is to present language in context.

The context for introducing new language should have a number of characteristics.It should show what the new language means and how it is used, for example. That is why many useful contexts have the new language being used in a written text or dialogue.

A good context should be interesting for the children. This doesn’t mean that all the subject matter we use for presentation should be wildly funny or inventive all of the time. But the pupils should at least want to see or hear the information.

Lastly, a good context will provide the background for a lot of language use so that students can use the information not only for the repetition of model sentences but also for making their own sentences.

Often the textbook will have all the characteristics mentioned here and the teacher can confidently rely on the material for the presentation. But the textbook is not always so appropriate: for a number of reasons the information in the book may not be right for our students in such cases we will want to create our own contexts for language use.

1.1.2 Types of context

Context means the situation or body of information, which causes language to be used. There are a number of different context types, but for our purposes we will concentrate on three, the students’ world, the outside world and formulated information.

The students’ world can be a major source of contexts for language presentation. There are two kinds of students’ world. Clearly we can use the physical surroundings that the students are in — the classroom, school or institution. But classrooms and their physical properties (tables, chairs, windows, etc.) are limited. The students’ lives are not constrained in the same way, however, and we can use facts about them, their families, friends and experiences.

The outside world provides us with rich contexts for presentation For example, there is an almost infinite number of stories we can use to present different lenses. We can also create situations where people speak because they are in those situations, or where the writer describes some special information. This is especially useful for the practice of functional language, for example.

We can ask students to look at examples of language which show the new language in operation, though this last category can sometimes have no context. These three sub-categories, story, situation or language, can be simulated or real. Most teachers are familiar with ‘made-up’ stones which arc often useful for classwork: real stories work well too, of course. In the same way we can create the simulation of an invitation dialogue, for example. But here again we could also show students a real invitation dialogue. In general we can say that real contexts are better simply because they are real, but they may have complexities of language and comprehensibility which can be avoided by simulated contexts — life-like but clearly mode-up to some extent.

Formulated information refers to all that information which is presented in the form of timetables, notes, charts etc. Once again we can use real charts and timetables, growth statistics, etc. or we can design our own which will be just right for our students.

1.1.3 The presentation of structural form

One of the teacher’s jobs is to show how the new language is formed — how the grammar works and how it is put together. One way of doing this is to explain the grammar in detail, using grammatical terminology and giving a mini-lecture on the subject. This seems problematical, though, for two reasons; firstly many pupils may find grammatical concepts difficult, secondly- such explanations for beginners will be almost impossible.

A more effective — and less frightening — way of presenting form is to let the students see and/or hear the new language, drawing their attention in a number of different ways to the grammatical elements of which it is made. For whilst advanced students may profit from grammatical explanations to a certain extent, at lower levels we must usually find simpler and more transparent ways of giving students grammatical information.

1.1.4 A general model for introducing new language

The model has five components: lead-in, elicitation, explanation, accurate reproduction, and immediate creativity.

During the lead-in the context is introduced and the meaning or use of the new language is demonstrated. This is the stage at which students may hear or see some language (including the new language) and during which students may become aware of certain key concepts. The key concepts are those pieces of information about the context that are vital if students are to understand the context and thus the meaning and use of the new language.

During the lead-in stage, then, we introduce our context (making sure that key concepts are understood) and show the new language in use.

During the elicitation stage the teacher tries to see if the students can produce the new language. If they can it would clearly be wasteful and de-motivating for them if a lot of time was spent practicing the language that they already know. At the elicitation stage — depending on how well (and if) the students can produce the new language — the teacher can decide which of the stages to go to next. If the students can’t produce the new language at all, for example, we will move to the explanation stage. If they can, hut with minor mistakes, we may move to the accurate reproduction stage to clear up those problems. If they know the new language but need a bit more controlled practice in producing it we may move directly to the immediate creativity stage Elicitation is vitally important for it gives the teacher information upon which to act: it is also motivating for the students and actively involves their learning abilities.

During the explanation stage the teacher shows how the new language is formed. It is here that we may give a listening drill or explain something in the students’ own language; we may demonstrate grammatical form on the blackboard. In other words, this is where the students learn how the new language is constructed.

During the accurate reproduction stage students are asked to repeat and practise a certain number of models. The emphasis here will be on the accuracy of what the students say rather than meaning or use. Here the teacher makes sure that the students can form the new language correctly, getting the grammar right and perfecting their pronunciation as far as is necessary.

1.2 Teaching grammar patterns

We’ll examine «Teaching Grammatical Patterns» by Robert Lado (Chapter 10 «From Sentences to Patterns»)

Robert Lado thinks that even children who have never studied the rules grammar make use of the grammar of the language. This is seen in the mistakes they make. When a child says, He goed, he is forming a «regular» preterite on the pattern: showed, weighed, served: «goed.» His error reveals the fact that he has been applying the pattern even though he is not able to describe it.

Patterns and Sentences

A grammatical pattern is an arrangement of parts having linguistic significance beyond the sum of its parts. The parts of a pattern are expressed by words or classes of words so that different sentences often express the same pattern. All the sentences of a language are cast in its patterns.

John telephoned, The boy studied.

We understood different sentences are expressing the same statement pattern in English.

A pattern is not a sentence, however. Sentences express patterns. Each sentence illustrates a pattern. To memorize a sentence does not imply that a pattern has been memorized. There can be countless sentences, each unique, yet all constructed on the same pattern.

Patterns and Grammar

Children learn the grammatical patterns of their language before they study grammar in school. When a child says goed instead of went or knowed instead of knew, he is applying the regular preterite pattern on the analogy,

open: opened = go: goed

Patterns are learned in childhood. Adults no longer have to learn new patterns; they learn new words that are used in old patterns. That the old patterns are alive is shown by putting unknown words and phrases into them.

And what is the role of the native language in learning the patterns of a foreign language?

Native Language Factor

The most important factor determining ease and difficulty in learning the patterns of a foreign language is their similarity to or difference from the patterns of the native language. When the pattern in the target language is parallel to one in the native language, the student merely learns new words which he puts into what amounts to an extended use of his native pattern. Since his word learning capacity is not lost, he makes rapid progress. When, however, the native language pattern does not parallel that of the target language, the student tends to revert to his native language patterns through habit.

Grading the Patterns

There is no single grading scale for teaching the patterns of a foreign language. Any systematic cumulative progression, taking into account the structures that are difficult, would be satisfactory from a linguistic point of view.

Pattern-practice

Approach The mimicry-memorization exercise tends to give the same amounts of practice to easy as well as difficult problems. It also concentrates unduly on the memorization of specific sentences, and not enough on the manipulation of the patterns of sentences in a variety of content situations. For those patterns that are functionally parallel to the native language, very little work needs to be done, and very little or no explanation is necessary. On the other hand, for those patterns that are not parallel in the two languages, more specific understanding of the grammatical structure points at issue is needed while the sentences are learned and not before or after. And more practice with the pattern is necessary before it is learned, that is, used without attention to its structure.

Basic sentences

The memorization of sample sentences that con­tain the grammatical problems to he mastered is common to both pattern practice and mimicry-memorization. For this practice there is ample justification in linguistics and in psychology. The utterances have to become readily available if the student is to use them in the rapid sequence of conversation.

Teaching the patterns

A sentence can be learned as a single unstructured unit like a word, but this is only the beginning. The stu­dent must acquire the habit of constructing sentences in the patterns of the target language. For this he must be able to put words almost automatically into a pattern without changing it, or to change it by making the necessary adjustments.

Teaching a problem pattern begins with teaching the specific struc­ture points where a formal change in the pattern is crucial and where the student is not able to manipulate the required changes. The steps in teaching problem patterns are (1) attention pointer, usually a single sentence calling the students’ attention to the point at issue; (2) ex­amples, usually minimally contrastive examples showing a pair of sen­tences that differ only on the point or points being made; (3) repetition by the class and presentation of additional examples of the same contrast; (4) comments or generalization elicited inductively from the students and confirmed by the teacher; (5) practice, with attention on the problem being taught.

These steps an intended to clarify the crucial point of contrast at the time when sentences are being learned. They should take only a small portion of the class time—no more than 15 per cent.

Robert Lado accents that many teachers make the mistake of trying to explain everything at length while the class listens passively. Long explanations without active practice are a waste of time, and even with practice they are inefficient. Most of the class should be devoted to practice.

1.3 Correction

During the accurate reproduction phase there are two basic correction stages: showing incorrectness (indicating to the student that something is wrong) and using correction techniques.

Showing incorrectness

This means that we will indicate to the student that a mistake has been made. If the student understands this feedback he or she will be able to correct the mistake and this self-correction will be helpful to him or her as part of the learning process.

There are a number of techniques for showing incorrectness:

Repeating: Here we simply ask the student to repeat what he or she has just said by using the word ‘again’. This, said with a questioning intonation, will usually indicate that the response was unsatisfactory (although it could be misunderstood as only indicating that the teacher has not heard the student’s response).

Echoing: We will be even clearer if we repeat what the student has just said, using a questioning intonation since this will clearly indicate that we are doubting the accuracy or content of what is being said.

Sometimes we can echo the complete student response, probably stressing the pan of the utterance that was incorrect, for example:

She go to school?

Another possibility is to echo the student’s response, but only up to the point where the mistake was made,ftor example: She go …?

Echoing, in its various forms, is probably the most efficient way of showing incorrectness.

Denial: We can simply tell the student that the response was unsatisfactory and ask for it to be repeated. This seems somewhat drier than the techniques so far discussed; it may be a bit more discouraging.

Questioning: We can say ‘Is that correct?’ asking any student in the class to answer our question. This has the advantage of focusing everybody’s mind on the problem, though it may make the student who made the mistake seem somewhat exposed.

Expression: Many teachers indicate that a response was incorrect by their expression or by some gesture. This is very economical (and can be quite funny) but can be dangerous if the student thinks that the expression or gesture is a form of mockery.

In general, showing incorrectness should be handled with tact and consideration. The process of student self-correction, which it provokes, is an important and useful part of the learning process. Showing incorrectness should be seen as a positive act, in other words, not as a reprimand.

Frequently, however, we find that showing incorrectness is not enough for the correction of a mistake or an error and the teacher may therefore have to use some correction techniques.

Using correction techniques

If students are unable to correct themselves we can resort to one of the following techniques.

Student corrects student: we can ask if anyone else can give the correct response. We can ask if anyone can ‘help’ the student who has made the mistake. If another student can supply the correct information it will be good for that student’s self-esteem. However, the student who originally made the mistake may feel humiliated if this technique is used insensitively.

Teacher corrects student(s): Sometimes we may feel that we should take charge of correction because the students are extremely mixed-up about what the correct response should be. In that case we can re-explain the item of language, which is causing the trouble. This will be especially appropriate when we see that a majority of the class are having the same problem. After the re-explanation we can move to choral and individual repetition (if necessary) before moving on.

The object of using correction techniques, of course, is to give the student(s) a chance to (know how to) get the new language right. It is important, therefore, that when we have used one of the techniques suggested above, we ask the student who originally made the mistake to give us a correct response.

When the children and teacher are confident that the children can form the new language correctly they will move to immediate creativity. Here they try to use what they have just learned to make sentences of their own, rather than sentences which the teacher or book has introduced as models.

It is at this stage that both teacher and student can see if the students have really understood the meaning, use and form of the new language. If they are able to produce their own sentences they can feel confident that the presentation was success.

Notice again that if the students perform well during elicitation the teacher can move straight to immediate creativity. If at that stage they perform badly the teacher may find it necessary either to return to a short accurate reproduction stage or in extreme cases, to re-explain the new language.

1.4 The Most Common Difficulties Pupils Howe in Assimilating English Grammar

The chief difficulty in learning a new language is that of changing from the grammatical mechanism of the native language to that of the new language. Indeed, every language has its own way of fitting words together to form sentences. In English, word order is more important than in Russian. The word order in Tom gave Helen a rose indicates what was given (a rose), to whom (Helen), and by whom (Tom). If we change the word order and say Helen gave tom a rose, we shall change the meaning of the sentence. In Russian, due to inflexions, which are very important in this language, we can say Том дал Лене розу or Лене дал Том розу without changing the meaning of the sentence, as the inflexion “e” in the word Лене indicates the object of the action.

The inversion of subject and finite verb in Are you… indicates the question form. In speaking English, Russian pupils often violate the word order which results in bad mistakes in expressing their thoughts.

The English tense system also presents a lot of trouble to Russian-speaking pupils because of the difference which exists in these languages with regard to time and tense relations. For example, the pupil cannot at first understand why we must say I have seen him today and I saw him yesterday. For him the action is completed in both sentences, and he does not associate it in any way with today or yesterday.

The sequence of tenses is another difficult point of English grammar for Russian speaking pupils because there is no such phenomenon in their mother tongue. Why should we say She said she was busy when she is busy?

The use of modal verbs in various types of sentences is very difficult for the learner. For example, he should differentiate the use of can and may while in Russian the verb may covers them both. Then he should remember which verb must be used in answers to the questions with modal verbs. For instance, May I go home? No, you mustn’t. May I take your pen? Yes, you may. Must I do it? No, you needn’t.

The most difficult point of English grammar is the article because it is completely strange to Russian-speaking pupils. The use of the articles and other determiners comes first in the list of the most frequent errors. Pupils are careless in the use of “these tiny words” and consider them unimportant for expressing their thoughts when speaking English.

English grammar must begin, therefore, with pupils’ learning the meaning of these structural words, and with practice in their correct use. For example: This is a pen. The pen is red. This is my pen and that is his pen.

PART 4 TYPES OF EXERCISES FOR THE ASSIMILATION OF GRAMMAR

1.1 Recognition exercises

These exercises are the easiest type of exercises for pupils to perform. They observe the grammar item in structures (sentence patterns) when hearing or reading. Since pupils only observe the new grammar item the situations should be natural and communicative. For example:

Listen to the sentences and raise your hands whenever you hear the verbs in the Past Simple.

Mike lives in Pushkin Street. I lived there last year. Ann gets up at 7 o’clock in the morning. She got up at half past seven yesterday. Etc.

It is desirable that sentences formed should concern real situations and facts.

Pupils listen to the teacher and raise their hands when they hear a verb in the Past Simple. The teacher can see whether each of his pupils has grasped the sentence.

Read the sentences and choose the correct form of the verb. The following sentences may be suggested:

I (go, went) to school yesterday.

Tom (takes, took) a bus when he goes to school.

She (got, gets, gets) up at 7 o’ clock every day.

Pupils should read the sentences and find the signals for the correct choice of the form. Since the necessary form is suggested in each sentence they should only recognize the one they need for a given context.

Recognition exercises are indispensable as pupils retain the grammar material through auditory and visual perception. Auditory and visual memory is at work.

1.2 Drill exercises

They are more completed as they require reproduction on the part of the pupils. In learning a foreign language drill exercises are indispensable. The learners cannot assimilate the material if they only hear and see it. They must reproduce it both in outer and inner speech. The more often they say it the better they assimilate the material. Though drill exercises are those in which pupils have only one difficulty to overcome, they should also be graded:

Repetitive drill. Pupils pronounce the sentence pattern after the teacher, in imitation of the teacher, both individually and in unison. For example:

Teacher: They are dancing in the park.

Class: They are dancing in the park.

Individuals: They are dancing in the park.

Or pupils listen to the dialogue and say it after the speaker.

-Is Ann dancing now?

-No, she isn’t.

-What is she doing?

-She is watching television.

Attention is drawn to the correct pronunciation of the sentence pattern as a sense unit, as a statement (sounds, stress, and melody).

Substitution. Pupils substitute the words or phrases in a sentence pattern. For example:

The children are dancing in the park.

The children are dancing in the garden.

The children are dancing in the street.

The children are dancing in the yard.

The children are dancing in the hall.

The children are dancing after classes.

The children are dancing at the party.

A pupil substitutes a phrase, the rest may say it in unison. Then they are invited to replace the word dancing with other words.

They are singing in the park.

They are working in the park.

They are walking in the park.

They are playing in the park.

They are running in the park.

They are talking in the park.

They are watering flowers in the park.

They are planting trees in the park.

They are helping the workers in the park.

The use of a particular verb is stimulated with pictures (or a Russian word). Quick revision is achieved with a small expenditure of effort. In this way they review many words and phrases. As pupils have only one difficulty to overcome the work does not take much time. Or pupils are invited to replace the words in the dialogue with those given in columns (see the dialogue above).

There is one more advantage in performing this type of exercises—pupils consolidate the grammar item without thinking about it. They think of the words, phrases, but not of the form itself, therefore, involuntary memory is at work.

Completion

Pupils complete the sentences the teacher utters looking at the pictures he shows. For example:

Teacher: Look at the picture.

Mike is … … .

Pupil: Mike is getting up.

Class: Mike is getting up.

Teacher: Mike is … … .

Pupil: Mike is dressing.

Class: Mike is dressing.

Attention should be given to the use of is in this exercise. The teacher should pronounce Mike is … to prevent the typical mistake of the pupils (Mike dressing). This is essential structural element of the tense form of the Present Continuous; Russian-speaking pupils, however, do not feel any necessity to use it.

Answering the teacher’s questions

For example:

Teacher: Is Mike getting up?

Pupil: Yes, he is.

Teacher: Who is getting up?

Pupil: Mike is.

Teacher: What is Mike doing?

Pupil: He is getting up.

Drill exercises may be done both orally and in written form. Pupils perform oral exercises during the lesson and written ones at home. For example, they ate told to write five or seven sentences on the model given.

During the next lesson the work done at home is checked orally. In this way pupils have practice in pronunciation while reading their own examples, and in auding while listen­ing to their classmates.

1.3 Creative exercises(speech exercises)

This is the most difficult type of exercises as it requires creative work on the part of the learners. These may be:

Making statements either on the picture the teacher shows, or on objects. For example, the teacher hangs up a pic­ture and asks his pupils to say or write three or five statements in the Present Continuous.

Asking questions with a given grammar item. For example, pupils are invited to ask and answer questions in the Past Indefinite.

Speaking about the situation offered by the teacher. For example, one pupil gives commands to perform this or that action, the other comments on the action (actions) his classmate performs.

Pupil 1: Go to the door, Sasha.

Pupil 2: Sasha is going to the door.

Pupil 3: Open the door.

Pupil 4: Sasha is opening the door.

Speaking on a suggested topic. For example, a pupil tells the class what he did yesterday.

Making dialogues using the grammar item covered.

Telling the story (read, heard).

Translating into English.

Participating in free conversation in which pupils are to use the grammar item they have learned. E. g., pupils have learned sentence patterns with the impersonal it.

Through these questions pupils are stimulated to speak about the weather and use the grammar item they have learnt.

All the exercises of the creative type are designed for con­solidating grammar material pupils need for hearing and speaking.

All the exercises mentioned above are designed:

to develop pupils’ skills in recognizing grammar forms while auding and reading English texts;

to accumulate correct sentence patterns in the pupils’ memory which they can reproduce whenever they need these patterns for speaking or writing;

to help the pupils to produce sentences of their own using grammar items necessary for speaking about a situation or a topic offered, or writing an essay on the text heard or an annotation on the text read.

1.4 Grammar tests

A check on the assimilation of grammar material is carried out through:

auding (if a pupil understands what he auds, he knows grammar);

speaking (if a pupil uses the grammar item correctly, he has assimilated it);

reading (if a learner understands what he reads, he knows grammar);

tests.

Tests allow the teacher to evaluate pupils’ achievement in grammar, that is, how each of them has mastered forms, meaning, and usage. Tests in grammar may involve: filling in the blanks; opening the brackets; transformation (e. g., make it negative, change into plural, etc.); extension (e. g., / like to read books — I like to raid English bocks in our li­brary); completion (e. g., When I came home …); making state­ments on the pictures given; translation.

CONCLUSION

In order to understand a language and express oneself correctly one must assimilate the grammar mechanism of a language. Indeed, one may know all the words in a sentence and yet fail to understand it, if one does not see the relationship between the words in the given sentence. And vice versa, a sentence may contain one, two, and more unknown words but if one has a good knowledge of the structure of the language one can easily guess the meanings of these words or at least find them in a dictionary, No speaking is possible without the knowledge of grammar, without the forming of a grammar mechanism. Children need grammar to be able to speak, and write in the target language.

Our aim is to form grammar skills and prevent children from making grammar mistakes in their speech. The aim of foreign languages in primary schools is to develop pupils’ skills in order to understand speech and participate in conversation.

The method and techniques the teacher should use in teaching children of primary school is the direct method and various techniques which can develop pupils’ listening comprehension and speaking.

We have examined two kinds of grammar skills: the reproductive and receptive grammar skills. The reproductive grammar skills give pupils an opportunity to make up their own sentences in oral and written forms in other words to communicate and the receptive grammar skills give them an opportunity to read texts or aud and understand it.

To master the reproductive grammar skills one should study the basic sentences or models (grammar is presented as itself in the basic sentences), to master the receptive grammar skills one should identify and analyze the grammar item. We teach children to read by means of grammar. It reveals the relationship between the words in the given sentence.

We have such a conclusion that the forming of grammar skills depends on training. Training is of great importance to realize the grammar item. We must use a lot of training exercises for the assimilation of grammar. We should provide the motivation of learn English, encourage children to communicate and remember that the correction of errors in the early stages of a language course may foster the following negative aspects:

children lose confidence when they have fear of making grammar mistakes

children become reluctant to take risks: they only the say the information they know they can say

We should realize the importance of training exercises and the role of the individual approach to teaching the children. Besides, the teacher must have a clear idea of the grammar of the language, its structure and usage; everything he teaches must be based on it; he should always be conscious of introducing or practicing some point of grammar.

LITERATURE

Rogova, G.V., “Methods of teaching English”; М.,1970

Harmer, Jeremy, “the practice English language teaching”; London-New York; Longman,1991

Синявская, Е.В. и др., «Вопросы методики обучения иностранным языком за рубежом.» /сост.: Е.В.Синявская, М.М. Васильева, С.В.Калинина/; М., Просвещение,1978

Handschin, Charles H., “Methods of teaching modern languages.”; N.Y.,World Book Co.,1926

Bennett, William Arthur., ”Aspects of Language and language teaching.”; London-New York., Cambridge univ. press, 1968

Lado Robert and Fries Charles C., “English pattern practices. Establishing the patterns as habits.”; The univ. of Michigan press, 1970

F.L Billows., “The Techniques of Language Teaching.”; Longman, 1962

Fries, Charles Carpenter., “Teaching and Learning English as a foreign language.”; The univ. of Michigan press, 1964

Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rogers., “ Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.”; Cambridge univ. press, 1986

Elaine Tarone and George Yule., “Focus on Language Learner.”; Oxford univ., 1991

Michael H. Long, Jack C. Richards., “Methology in Tesol: A book of Readings.”; USA., 1987

Pooley, Robert., “teaching English grammar.”; N.Y., Appleton – Century – Crofts, 1957

F.Genesee., “Educating second language children: the whole child, the whole curriculum, the whole community.” Cambridge, 1994

Griffith,S. “Teaching English Abroad”; Oxford,1991

Rivers, Wilga M., “Speaking in many tongues: Essays in foreign-language teaching.”; 3rd ed., Cambridge, 1983

Rixon, Shelagh., “How to use games in language teaching.”; London, The Macmillan press,1981

Applegate, Maurel., “Easy in English. An imaginative approach to the teaching of language arts.”; N.Y.,1960

Geoffrey Broughton, Christopher Brumfit, Roger Flavel, “Teaching English as a foreign language.”; London, 1981

Swan M., Smith B., “Learner English. A teacher’s guide to interference and other problems.”; Cambridge, 1987

Brown C. And Jule., “Teaching the spoken language.”; Cambridge, 1983

www.teachingenglish.org.uk

www.englishclub.narod.ru

42

Annotation

This course paper deals with new ways and methods of correcting students’ pronunciation mistakes. Teaching English pronunciation is important and actual nowadays, so problems of teaching pronunciation and correcting students’ mistakes in pronouncing are discovered in this course paper. There are a variety of good methods and techniques suggested for correcting learners’ errors on the spot. Mistakes are part of our life; we all make mistakes now and then. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes as long as we learn from them and avoid repeating them over and over. Additional information has been obtained from the literature on the subject, to verify and assess the findings of the present study. Introduction deals with the description of such items as: actuality of the problem, the aim, the objects, the subject, the tasks, the methods, the sources.

Theoretical part deals with the perceptions of The importance of teaching English pronunciation, Modelling pronunciation, Aspects of pronunciation, The Role of Teaching Pronunciation in FLT.

Practical part deals with the correcting learners’ pronunciation mistakes, the ways and methods of correcting students pronunciation mistakes, Correcting Without Hurting, Exercises for the Pronunciation of Plurals for English second language.

Conclusion deals with the summary of all practical materials concerning the correcting learners’ pronunciation mistakes.

Contents

Introduction

1. The importance of teaching English pronunciation

1.1 Ancient and Modern Pronunciations

1.2 Listening and pronunciation

1.3 Modelling pronunciation

1.4 Performance of a text

1.5 Aspects of pronunciation

1.6 The Role of Teaching Pronunciation in FLT

2. Correcting learners’ pronunciation mistakes

2.1 New ways of correcting spoken errors

2.2 Correcting Without Hurting

2.3 Mistakes Made During Discussions and Activities

2.4 Problems of correcting students’ pronunciation

2.5 Exercises for the Pronunciation of Plurals for English second language

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix

Introduction

Actuality of the research work.

A lot of time and effort is spent on training courses and beyond in encouraging teachers to consider whether immediate or later correction of student errors during oral work is appropriate. There are a variety of good methods and techniques suggested for correcting students’ errors on the spot. Mistakes are part of our life; we all make mistakes now and then. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes as long as we learn from them and avoid repeating them over and over.

To correct students’ errors has always been, and will always be the concern of most teachers. Some teachers are in favor of immediate correction, while others are in favor of delayed correction. Some would even go further to consider the whole process as time–consuming. In this article, I would like to dwell, based on my practical experience, upon this controversial issue to offer some suggestions for both immediate and delayed correction.

When students are corrected in front of their classmates, they feel offended and get discouraged. They expect teachers to continually correct them during classes. Failure to do so is likely to create confusion and suspicion on the part of the students. As such, teachers are expected to strive to find most creative ways to deal with this problem that most typically arises. They need to encourage and stimulate their students to participate in class without any fear of making mistakes.

Most students refuse to answer to the teacher in the classroom on the ground that they are most likely to be the laughingstock of their class fellows. Consequently, they get discouraged and feel humiliated. They refrain from responding to the teacher’s questions which may deprive them of a valuable learning opportunity.

Generally speaking, there are three types of oral mistakes that need to be corrected during class-discussion. These are: grammatical, vocabulary, and pronunciation mistakes. This leads us to a very important question: should we interrupt our students during discussion or avoid interrupting them as much as we can? To answer this question we need to ask ourselves whether the focus is on accuracy or fluency. In fact, to save our students the embarrassment and in order not to distract them, we can employ less provocative approaches. One way is to make notes of the most common mistakes made by a student to be discussed later. Write them on the board without revealing the name of the student in order not embarrass him/her. Ask the rest of the class to identify these mistakes and correct them. Another way is to raise an eyebrow, or say, “Excuse me?” Or the teacher can ask for repetition without indicating the mistake.

Also we can employ another approach called, ‘selective correction’. In this case, the teacher decides to correct only certain errors. These errors can be decided by the objectives of the lesson, or the exercise that is being done. In other words, if students are focusing on past simple tense, then only errors related to this grammatical area need to be corrected. Other mistakes are ignored.

In conclusion, the teacher can decide which is the most beneficial and effective approach to error correction based on the situation itself. It will help students overcome their shyness and play an active role in class discussions without being afraid of making mistakes. In this case, they would acknowledge and accept their mistakes as part of the learning process instead of being offended when they are corrected by their teacher.

The aim of the research work is to consider what benefits correction of any kind might have for learners, as well as to present some ideas for conducting later correction (correction slots).

The object is theoretical phonetics of the English language.

The subject of the research work: correcting students’ pronunciation.

The tasks of research:

1. To analyze theoretical material on the problem of the research.

2. To reveal peculiarities of English pronunciation.

3. To investigate new ways and methods of correcting students’ pronunciation.

Following methods of the research were used during the writing of the work:

1. study and analyze of methodical literature;

2. determined observation on usage of studying materials.

The source consists of scientific, phonetic materials, teaching aids, articles on phonetics.

1. The importance of teaching English pronunciation

Contributing this particular gift can occasionally be a bit tricky, for several reasons. First, your students have already studied English for years and their pronunciation habits are not easy to change. A second problem for those of you who are native speakers of English is that you produce sounds so naturally that you may not be aware of how you do it, so even when you know that your students’ pronunciation is wrong, you may not know what the problem is or how to correct it. Finally, the overwhelming majority of Amity teachers are not native speakers of the British «RP» accent («Received Pronunciation», also known as «BBC English» or «the Queen’s English») which is the accepted English standard in Kazakhstan in most textbooks, including Junior and Senior English for Kazakh. (Even in the UK, this accent is spoken by only a fairly small minority.) The upshot of all this is that teaching pronunciation may a more complicated issue than it seems.

The good news, however, is that through dint of hard effort it is possible for students to make some improvement in their pronunciation, particularly when they are attending to their pronunciation. (In other words, even future teachers with fairly heavy accents can learn to pronounce words accurately enough when paying attention that they provide an acceptable model for their own students.) If you pay attention to your own pronunciation, and spend a little time browsing through typical Kazakh English textbooks, you should also be able to learn enough about the mechanics of pronunciation to be able to help students. Finally, as long as you are aware of the differences between your own accent and RP, you can provide a useful pronunciation model for your students.

In class, speak naturally using your own accent, although if there are marked regional features to your speech you might lean as far in the direction of a more broadly accepted standard as is comfortable for you.

Learn the differences between your accent and RP. If you are not familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet and the accepted RP pronunciation of words.

When teaching pronunciation, in places where your accent differs from RP, don’t insist that students follow you rather than the standard. (Future teachers will need to teach the standard in textbooks.) Rather, point out the difference between your accent and the standard so that students are aware of it.

Many of the pronunciation problems you encounter in students will have less to do with the fine tuning of a particular English accent than with simply getting them to pronounce words in a way that is more or less acceptable in any variety of English, so focus your efforts on the many areas where you can help students in their pronunciation. [1,52]

Ancient and Modern Pronunciations

We cannot be sure exactly how the ancient Romans pronounced their Latin, although the discipline of Historical Linguistics has given us a reasonably good idea of their general spoken practice. The early borrowings from Latin into various languages give some idea of the Roman pronunciation, for example Gothic «wins» meaning ‘wine’ was borrowed from Latin «vinum»; this shows the -w- pronunciation of -v- in Latin clearly, at least at the time that the borrowing took place.

In English speaking countries, two problems arise: First, are we to pronounce -v- as -w- is pronounced in English, or like English -v-? And then are we to say -ch- for Latin -c-, palatalizing the consonant before the fronted vowels, as in Italian, or pronounce it like English hard -k-? Teachers trained in the tradition of the Catholic Church will generally use the fricative -v- and the palatalized -ch-, others will use the other sounds, which the majority of modern scholars feels to be more authentic. A great deal of heat, if not light, has been spent on the problem of the «correct pronunciation of Latin». Probably most students will go with the method that their teachers use., but whichever way you follow, remember that this is a matter of scholarship, not of religion or faith. If there is any overriding parameter of judgment, it should probably be on the side of convenience, but in the last analysis the student who is really concerned with the way Latin may have sounded, as a part of his esthetic appreciation of a poet like Vergil, must try to find out the best way, so far as he can determine it, and follow it.

One person finds it ludicrous to read Vergil with an accent which appeared a thousand years after the poet’s death; but another reads Vergil the way Dante read him, thinking this is good enough for him. Here as elsewhere de gustibus non disputandum est.

But if you are going to try to read Latin authentically, be sure you do not aspirate the stop-consonants, which is one of the oddities of English which makes the study of English so far for most others. It is virtually necessary to say «arpor» for ‘tree» in order to avoid the Anglicized «arbhor». We know from grammarians that the Romans said «urps» for the city of Rome, and this is probably typical of their general pronunciation of the stop consonants. Furthermore, you should not use that nondescript English -r-, but roll your -r- broadly, as most of the Romanic language do. Whether it is a tongue trill, or a throat rumble is not important, so long as it isn’t an English vanishing- consonant with a tongue flap (like «berry» pronounced ‘Betty’) or an American hybrid.

More important is the matter of the pronunciation of verse, for which see Section 14) of this supplement for a full discussion. The substitution of stressed accent in the place of genuinely LONG vowels is arbitrary and quite against the nature of both Greek and Latin poetry, which was length-conscious without any special attention to stress. If this process is justified by saying that it is a habit, understand that it is a bad habit, and please cut it out. Substituting STRESS for LENGTH is about as sensible as tapping your foot every time you hear a Chinese rising tone. [2,56]

Incidentally much the same misfortune has accrued to the sensitive and lovely Classical Greek language, where a perfectly attested pitch inflection of a musical fifth (marked by an acute accent in the Alexandrian period for the benefit of benighted foreigners like us) is regularly replaced by a heavy stress. This identical stress is also used for the circumflex, which loses its double-length and up-and-down musical inflection, so reminiscent of Swedish. And (believe it or not!) this same stress is used for the grave, which is nothing more than the replacement of an acute by a low (barytone) at base level, and is so marked in some extant papyri on every syllable for real dunderheads in the Alexandrian schools. But for the pig-headed, caution to the winds!

If you did these thoughtless things to modern Bengali, people would fail to understand you, or jeer if you persisted. But since the Classical peoples are not around to defend themselves, it look like a case linguistic open-season on whatever is around. But the bottom line: You are losing authenticity, and more important a large measure of esthetic appreciation.

Listening and pronunciation

Unless you are fortunate enough to have very small classes, it will be difficult to give much individual attention to students’ pronunciation. Students must therefore learn to rely on their ears to tell them whether their pronunciation approximates that of native speaker models. However, many students are not in the habit of listening carefully before attempting to repeat. In fact, they have often been trained for years to immediately repeat whatever the teacher says, no matter how vague their impression is of the jumble of sounds they are trying to reproduce. Another problem is that while students are listening to the teacher’s spoken model, their attention is often focused more on preparing to repeat than on listening. The teacher’s sentence consequently serves less as a model for pronunciation than as a starting shot announcing that students should try to speak.

The first approach to pronunciation is thus helping students develop the habit of listening carefully before they speak. To do this, the first time you say a word or sentence, ask students to listen just listen. They should not murmur the utterance quietly after you; instead they should concentrate on fixing the sound in their memories. It is helpful if you repeat the model utterance several times before asking students to repeat; this not only allows them more chances to listen but also helps students break the habit of blurting out a response as soon as you finish.

Exercises which require listening but no oral response may also help sharpen student listening skills. Minimal pair drills are particularly good for helping students learn to hear the difference between similar sounds. Minimal pairs are words that are pronounced exactly the same with the exception of one sound (Ex: pin—pen, bid—bit). Sample exercise: To help students learn to hear the difference between the short «i» and «e» sounds, ask students to raise their pen when you say the word «pen» and a pin when you say «pin.»

Training students’ ability to hear sound distinctions will not necessarily result in good pronunciation. However, students who have not clearly heard a sound obviously have less chance to produce it correctly than those who listen carefully. [3,47]

Modelling pronunciation

Most native speakers of English have not formally studied the mechanics of English pronunciation, so this is an area in which it would be helpful to do some homework so that you are prepared to explain how sounds are made if called on to do so. However, you will almost certainly be expected to serve as a model for pronunciation, and for this purpose a limited amount of choral drill can be useful. Steps for such a drill would be as follows:

1) Choose a text that represents normal spoken English (as opposed to more bookish language). A dialog from your textbook would be a good choice.

2) Read sentences aloud, clearly but at a fairly normal speed. Have students listen to each sentence once or twice before attempting to repeat it. Remind them that they should be listening to and trying to mimic the rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns of your speech as well as your pronunciation.

3) Build up longer sentences from the end, starting with the last few words, and then adding the previous ones. Ex: «…give you money?» «…expect me to give you money?» «Do you really expect me to give you money?» (This approach tends to preserve sentence intonation better than working from the beginning.)

One fun way to practice the rhythm of English sentences is by taking a dialog from a book, preferably one with short sentences, and turning it into a «jazz chant.» In essence, this means finding the natural rhythm of each sentence and then chanting it with emphasis on the key words, something like a group cheer at a football game or a chant at a protest rally («Hell no, we won’t go» and so forth). Clapping or pounding desks adds to the festive nature of the activity. This exercise is particularly good for driving home the point that not all words in English sentences get equal stress.

Suggestions:

If you want students to prepare choral drill of a dialog before class, it is best if they have a taped model to work with. Without having heard a dialog before they repeat it, they may wind up polishing an incorrect performance.

Choral drill is best in small doses. It generally only takes a short period of drill for students to get the point you wish to make, and drill beyond that point rapidly turns into mindless parroting. [4,58]

Performance of a text

Once students are able to repeat accurately after a spoken model, the next step is to have them practice speaking from a written text. Keeping pronunciation accurate while reading a text aloud is more difficult than repeating after a teacher, but it is still easier for students than maintaining correct pronunciation in free conversation because they can focus their attention on pronunciation rather than grammar or word choice.

One way to do this is to choose a text and copy it for students. If the goal is to teach daily conversational English, it is best if the text represents normal spoken English, though an argument can be made for sometimes including texts of literary and cultural merit (famous orations, poems, etc.) that were also intended to be read aloud or recited. Having chosen a text, go over it with students in class and have them take whatever notes they need on pronunciation, syllable stress, sentence intonation and stressed words. Next have students practice reading the text aloud (either in class or at home). Students should become very familiar with the text. Finally, either have students perform the text in class or — if the equipment is available — have them tape a reading of the text. The advantages of the latter approach are that students don’t all have to listen to each other read the same text, and that you can listen at your leisure. [5,95]

Aspects of pronunciation

Many students tend to think of pronunciation primarily as accurate production of the sounds of English words, but this is neither the only aspect of the problem nor the only important one. Consequently, one way in which you can help students improve is by ensuring that they are aware of all of the important issues. (see Appendix 4)

1) Accurate pronunciation of sounds: This is really two problems, one of ability and one of knowledge. Students first need to learn to pronounce as many of the sounds of English as possible accurately. The particular sounds with which students will have difficulty depend to a large extent on students’ first language, but there are some sounds in English such as the «th» sounds in «think» and «this», or the short vowels in «head,» «hit,» and «put» which are difficult for students from many language backgrounds.

The second problem is making sure that students know what sounds they should pronounce in a given word. Common pronunciation problems include omitting sounds, adding extra ones, or simply pronouncing the wrong sound.

2) Syllable stress: Unlike many other languages, English requires that one syllable in each word be stressed more than others. The importance of putting the stress on the right syllable in English cannot be underestimated; putting the stress on the wrong syllable is more likely to make a word unintelligible than is mispronouncing one of its sounds. For many students who are especially hard to understand, misplaced syllable stress is the main problem.

3) Sentence word stress: In English sentences, not all words are given equal emphasis. Key words (usually the words that contain new or important information) are stressed and pronounced more slowly and clearly than other words. Take, for example, the question «Are you going to go to Boston?» If the focus of the question is on where the listener will go, the sentence will sound something like «Ya gonna go ta Boston»; the word «Boston» would be pronounced clearly and with more emphasis. If, in contrast, the emphasis is on who is going, the sentence would sound like «Are you gonna go ta Boston?» While students don’t necessarily need to learn to reduce the unimportant words in sentence, they should learn to stress key ones. (Students should also be made aware of English word reductions for listening comprehension.)

4) Sentence intonation: Intonation patterns in English sentences primarily indicate the degree of certainty of an utterance, i.e. whether it is a statement, question, or suggestion. Statements rise to a plateau, and then end with falling intonation. Most questions end in rising intonation; however, Wh- questions (who, what, where, when, why and how) end with falling intonation. It is important for students to learn these patterns not only in order to communicate meaning, but also in order to avoid unwittingly sounding rude or indecisive.

5) Enunciation: A final important aspect of pronunciation is clear enunciation. Some students lack confidence in speaking or are unsure of their pronunciation, and therefore speak either very quietly or unclearly. Obviously this makes them more difficult to understand, and students should therefore be reminded that speaking audibly and clearly is an important aspect of pronunciation.

The ideal approach to student pronunciation problems is for you to work individually with each student, listening for problems, explaining the proper pronunciation (intonation, etc.), modelling correct pronunciation, and listening to the student practice. However, this is usually not possible because of time limitations and class size, so the discussion below will focus on approaches which can be used with a class. [6,52]

1.6 The role of teaching Pronunciation in FLT

Teaching English pronunciation is an area of language teaching that many English teachers avoid. While there are many textbooks and instruction manuals available, as well as books on the theories and methodologies of language teaching there is comparatively little on learning pronunciation.

Why? Is it because we don’t need to teach pronunciation or because it cannot be taught?

Certainly, we need to teach pronunciation. There is a big difference between a ship and a sheep and a pear and a bear! When teaching any language as a foreign or second language, our first goal for our students is basic communication, and that can’t happen if no one can understand what they are saying.

How NOT to Teach Pronunciation

When teachers decide to focus on pronunciation practise many of them make the mistake of trying to teach pronunciation along with introducing vocabulary. This can work with students who have a «good ear,» or who perhaps speak a related language. However it can be hit and miss with students whose mother tongue has no relation to the target language.

This brings us back to the question of whether pronunciation can be effectively taught at all? The answer is yes, of course it can be taught, it’s just that the way many textbooks tell us to teach it is actually one of the least effective.

Most textbooks will have you drill pronunciation with repetition of the vocabulary. Some of the better ones will have you work on it with spelling, which is an important skill, especially in English with its many irregularities and exceptions. Very few will start you and your students where you need to start, however, and that is at the level of the phoneme.

Start with Phonemes (but not necessarily phonetic script)

The dictionary defines «phoneme» as «any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.» This definition highlights one of the key reasons that we must, as language teachers, start our pronunciation instruction at the level of the phoneme. If a phoneme is a «perceptually distinct unit of sound» then we have to realize that before students can consistently produce a given phoneme, they must be able to hear it. Thus the first lessons in pronunciation should involve your students listening and identifying, rather than speaking. [7,85]

Introduce your phonemes in contrasting pairs like /t/ and /d/. Repeat the phonemes in words as well as in isolation and ask the students to identify them. In order to visually represent the differences they are listening for, you may want to draw pronunciation diagrams for each sound showing the placement of the tongue and lips.

You might also consider teaching your students the necessary symbols from the phonetic alphabet, because although T and D are written differently in English, the TH in «there» and the TH in «thanks» are written exactly the same, despite the difference in pronunciation. This isn’t essential, and really works best with adults rather than children, but it is worth it for any students who are highly visual or analytical learners.

You can play all sorts of matching games with this material to make the drills more fun and less stressful. You can have students play with nonsense sounds and focus on the tiny differences between contrasted phonemic pairs, the key being to get them to hear the phoneme.

All these games are included in the English Language Games Digital Book for adults with 163 games and activities!

From Recognition of Phonemes to Practise

Once they can hear and identify a phoneme, it’s time to practice accurate production of the sound. For this, pronunciation diagrams are useful. Your students need to be able to see where to put their lips and tongues in relation to their teeth. Most sounds are articulated inside your mouth and students have no idea what you are doing in order to produce that particular noise. If you have ever tried to teach a Japanese student how to say an American /r/, then you have experienced the frustration of trying to get a student to produce tongue movements they can’t see. There are books out there with diagrams, and with a little practice you can probably produce sketches of them yourself. If you can’t, get hold of a good reference book so that you can flip to the relevant pages. Your students will thank you for this insight into the mouth, especially since there is no danger of the embarrassment of bad breath with a drawing. [8, 26]

While this may sound time consuming and unnatural, you have to realize that you are in the process of reprogramming you students’ brains, and it is going to take a while. New neural pathways have to be created to learn new facial movements and link them with meaning.

In the classroom, we are recreating an accelerated version of the infant’s language learning experience. We are providing examples and stimulus through grammar and vocabulary lessons, but with pronunciation lessons we are also breaking down language to the point of babbling noises so that our students can play with the sounds, as infants do, and learn to distinguish meaningful sounds on an intuitive level while making use of more mature analytical skills that an infant doesn’t have.

If you regularly take ten minutes of your lesson to do this kind of focused phonemic practice, your students articulation and perception of phonemes will see improvement after several weeks, and you will get them all to the point where you can practice pronunciation on a word or even a sentential level.

Pronunciation games for children can be found in this English Language Games for Children book: English Language Games for Children

Moving on to Pronunciation of Words

The progress will be more pronounced with younger students, but even adults will begin to give up fossilized pronunciation errors when reciting vocabulary words in isolation. It’s time to make the next leap – correct pronunciation in the context of natural conversation. Make no mistake; this is a leap, not because it is more physically challenging, but because you are about to address a completely different set of barriers.

When we teach on the phonemic level, we are struggling to expand physical and neurological limitations. We are taking irrelevant noises and making them significant to our students, while trying to teach them a greater range of articulation with their mouths, tongues, and lips. But when we work on pronunciation at a lexical or sentential level, we are dealing with complex emotional, psychological, and cultural motivations that require their own kind of re-education.

Three Big Barriers to Good English Pronunciation

Anxiety, learned helplessness and cultural identity are the three biggest barriers to students’ successful adoption of a second language. Not every student will have all of these problems, but it is a sure thing that all of them will have at least one of these problems to a greater or lesser extent. As English teachers we have to find ways to bring these problems to our students’ attention in non-threatening ways, as well as suggest tools and strategies for dealing with them.

Anxiety is a fairly straightforward problem to discover. Students who feel a lot of anxiety in speaking are generally well aware of the situation and they know that it is impeding their progress. The impact on pronunciation specifically can be seen in their unwillingness to experiment with sounds, a general lack of fluency that makes it hard to blend sounds correctly, and poor control of the sentential elements of pronunciation, such as intonation and syllable stress. The best remedy for anxiety is highly structured, low- pressure practise. In other words – games.

Jazz chants, handclap rhymes, reader’s theatre, and dialog practise from textbooks can all be helpful. Structure and repetition reduce the pressure on the students and allow them to focus on pronunciation and intonation. Classroom rituals, like starting the lesson with a set greeting and reading aloud a letter from the teacher are also excellent ways to integrate pronunciation practise into the rest of the lesson while reducing stress for the student. Rote phrases, drilled for correct pronunciation, will eventually be internalized and the correct pronunciation will improve overall pronunciation. [9,74]

Learned helplessness is much harder to bring to a students attention, and may be difficult for the teacher to recognize. The term «learned helplessness» comes from psychology and refers to the reaction people and animals have to a hopeless situation. Basically, after trying something several times and consistently being unable to get a positive result, we shut down. We stop trying. If students are getting negative feedback on their English skills, especially pronunciation, and if they try to improve but feel they haven’t, then they stop trying. You might think they are being lazy, but in fact they simply don’t believe they can improve. They have already given up.

Luckily, once it is recognized, the fix is pretty easy: stay positive, praise frequently and specifically, and periodically tape students speaking so that they can hear the difference after a few months. If you can coax even a little progress out of a student, then tell the student exactly what they just did right (For example: The difference between your short /a/ and short /e/ were really clear that time! Let’s do it again!). Tape the students reading or reciting a passage at the beginning of the year, then tape the same passage every couple of months. Play the tapes for you student and let them hear how much they have improved over the course of a few months. They will probably impress themselves, and you!

Finally, the question of cultural identity has to be dealt with. Students that don’t want to be assimilated into an English speaking society aren’t going to give up the things that mark them as different. An accent is a clear message about one’s roots and history, and many people may be unwilling to completely give it up. As teachers, we need to ensure that students’ can be easily understood by others, but we don’t have to strive for some hypothetical Standard English pronunciation. In fact, we should highlight for our class that after a certain point, accents don’t matter much at all.

Some fun activities that can help your students become more sensitive to the subject of accents are doing impersonations, listening to native regional accents and teaching you a phrase in their own language. [10,58]

Impersonations can be done as a class. Students can impersonate famous people, like John Wayne or Nicholas Cage, or they can impersonate teachers – always a fun activity! The idea is to have them take on a whole different identity and try out the pronunciation that goes with it. Often, your students will produce the best English pronunciation of their lives when impersonating someone else. Be sure to tape them for this as well, since it proves that they can use English pronunciation in a conversation or monologue.

2. Correcting learners’ pronunciation mistakes

I had many students who have obtained an amazing vocabulary and whose grammar is the envy of other students. It is just too bad that no one can understand what they are saying. As an ESL teacher, your first priority is to help your students develop their pronunciation skills. Without proper pronunciation, other aspects of English such as vocabulary and grammar become useless if a student cannot be understood when he uses the language.

While pronunciation is the most important component of any ESL class, it is usually also the least interesting in the eyes of the students. Here are some tips to help you make the most out of teaching pronunciation to your ESL students:

–Never be shy to correct your students’ pronunciation in class. Wait until the student has completed the thought and then ask the class to repeat words that you think were not pronounced properly. Never interrupt a student in mid sentence.

–When you are teaching an ESL class about a particular topic, always spend at least 10 minutes teaching the pronunciation of new vocabulary words to students. As they use the vocabulary words, correct pronunciation as necessary.

–Use fun methods to teach pronunciation. One such method is by using a stick (or some kind of pointer) to point at each word. When you point, the students should repeat the word. If you don’t point, there should be complete silence. There will always be a student or two who will still say the word after you have pointed three or four times and suddenly stop. You can make a competition to see who is paying attention. Divide the classroom into five teams and give each team pictures of the vocabulary words or actual objects if they are available. When you call a word, the team that is responsible for that word should stand up and say the word in unison. As the game progresses, you can try to trick the teams by saying a vocabulary word but pointing at a team that is not responsible for the word. You can grade each team (using stars on the board) based on how every team member reacts, loudness, and togetherness.

–Always focus both on the group and invididuals when practing pronunciation. Having the group repeat after you is helpful, but it is also important to have individual students repeat after you to make sure that bad pronunciation does not get hidden in the group.

–Never allow your students to laugh at one another during pronunciation practice. Being laughed at can seriously damage a student’s inspiration to want to learn English. It is important to promote an environment were students can feel very comfortable with speaking outloud in class.

–If your students are having trouble with a particular word or sound, ask them to watch your mouth as you repeat the word. They can attempt to imitate the shape of your mouth which will help improve their pronunciation. [14,78]

2.1 New ways of correcting spoken errors

1. Collect the errors for later

You can then correct them later in the same class (with a game like a grammar auction or just eliciting corrections from the class) or in a future class (for example writing error dictation pairwork worksheets or using the same techniques as can be used in the same class). Make sure you give positive reinforcement as well, e.g. “Someone said this sentence, and that is really good.” (see Appendix 1)

2. Facial expression

For example, raise an eyebrow, tilt your head to one side or give a slight frown. Most people will do this naturally, but there is a slight chance a teacher’s expression will be too critical or too subtle for your students to pick up on, and you can (amusingly) practice facial expressions in a teaching workshop by participants communicating certain typical classroom messages (“move over there to work with this person”, “work in pairs” etc.) using just their heads and faces, including feedback on spoken errors in that list.

3. Body language

The problems with using body language to show errors could also be that it is taken as very serious criticism or that it is too vague. Possibilities include using your hands (rolling a hand from side to side to mean “so-so attempt”; making a circle by moving your index finger to mean “one more time”; or a cross with fingers, open palms or even forearms to show a very clear “no” or “wrong”- probably only suitable for a team game etc where the responsibility is shared), head (tilted to one side to mean “I’m not sure that sounds correct”), or shoulders (hunched to reinforce “I don’t understand what you are saying”). Again, practising this in a teaching workshop can be useful, as can eliciting other body language teachers could have used after an observation.

4. Point at the correct language

If you have something on the correct form easily accessible on the whiteboard, in the textbook or on a poster, just pointing at it can be a subtle but clear way of prompting students to use the correct language. What you point at could be the name of the tense or word form they are supposed to be using, a verb forms table or the actual correct verb form, a grammatical explanation, or another grammatical hint such as “future”, “prediction” or “polite”.

5. Repeat what they said

This can mean repeating the whole sentence, one section of it including the wrong part, the sentence up to the wrong part, the sentence with the wrong part missed out (with maybe a humming noise to show the gap that should be filled) or just the wrong part. You can illustrate that you are showing them an error and give some hint as to which bit is wrong by using a questioning tone (for everything you say or just for the wrong part). This method is overused by some teachers and can sound patronising if used too often or with the wrong tone of voice, so try to mix up the different versions of it described here and to alternate with methods described in the other tips.

6. Just say the right version

The students can then repeat the correct version or tell you what the difference between the two sentences was and why their version was wrong. Because the students don’t do much of the work in this way of being corrected, it might not be as good a way of remembering the correction as methods where you give more subtle clues. Its advantages are that it is quick and suits cultures, classes and students that think of elicitation as shirking by the teacher. It can also be more face-saving than asking them for self-correction, as trying to correct themselves risks making even more mistakes. The “right version” could mean the whole sentence or just the correction of the part that was wrong. In the latter case, you can then ask them to put it into the sentence in the right place and repeat the whole thing.

7. Tell them how many mistakes

This method is only really suitable for controlled speaking practice, but can be a very simple way of giving feedback in that situation. Examples include “Most of the comparatives were right, but you made two mistakes” and “Three words are in the wrong position in the sentence/ are mixed up”. Make sure you only use this method when students can remember what you are referring to without too much prompting.

Other useful language:

“Very good, but you made just one mistake with the passive”

(For a tongue twister) “Good attempt/ Getting better, but in two places you said /sh/ where it should have been /s/. Can you guess which words?”

8. Use grammatical terminology to identify the mistake

For example, “(You used) the wrong tense”, “Not the Present Perfect”, “You need an adverb, not an adjective” or “Can change that into the passive/ indirect speech?” This method is perhaps overused, and you need to be sure that the grammatical terminology isn’t just going to confuse them more.

Other useful language:

“Because that is the present simple, you need to add the auxiliary (verb) ‘do’”

“Say the same sentence, but with the comparative form”

9. Give the rule

For example, “‘Since’ usually takes the Present Perfect” or “One syllable adjectives make the comparative with –er, not more + adjective” This works best if they already know the rule, and you at least need to make sure that they will quickly understand what you are saying, for example by only using grammatical terminology you have used with them several times before.

10. Give a number of points

This is probably best saved for part of a game, especially one where students work together, but you can give each response a number of points out of 10. The same or other teams can then make another attempt at saying the same thing to see if they can get more points. If you don’t want students to focus on accuracy too much, tell them that the points will also give them credit for good pronunciation, fluency, politeness, persuasiveness and/ or originality of ideas.

Useful language:

“Very good fluency and very interesting, but a few basic mistakes, so I’ll give your team a score of (IELTS) 5.5. Practice your script in your team again for 5 minutes and we’ll try it one more time”

“You got all the articles right this time, so I’ll give you 9 out of 10”

11. Just tell them they are wrong (but nicely)

Positive ways of being negative include “nearly there”, “getting closer”, “just one mistake”, “much better”, “good idea, but…”,”I understand what you mean but…”, “you have made a mistake that almost everyone does/ that’s a very common mistake”, “we haven’t studied this yet, but…” and “much better pronunciation, but…” With lower level and new classes, you might have to balance the need to be nice with the need to be clear and not confuse them with feedback language that they don’t understand, perhaps by sticking to one or two phrases to give feedback for the first couple of months. It can also be useful to give them translations of this and other classroom language you will use, for example on a worksheet or a poster.

12. Tell them what part they should change

For example, “You need to change the introduction to your presentation” or “Try replacing the third word with something else”.

13. Ask partners to spot errors

This is a fairly well-known way of giving feedback in speaking tasks, but it can be a minefield if the person giving feedback has no confidence in their ability to do so or in how well the feedback (i.e. criticism) will be taken, and even more so if the person receiving the feedback will in fact react badly. This method is easier to do and easier to take when they have been told specifically which language to use while speaking and so to look out for when listening, usually meaning controlled speaking practice tasks. The feedback can be made even simpler to give and collect and more neutral with some careful planning, e.g. asking them count how many times their partner uses the target form as well as or instead of looking for when it used incorrectly.

14. Try again!

Sometimes, students don’t need much help at all but just a chance to do it again. This is likely to be true if you have trained them well in spotting their own errors, if there was some other kind of mental load such as a puzzle to solve that was distracting them from the language, or if they have had a chance to hear someone else doing the same speaking task in the class or on a recording.

Useful language:

“One more time (but think about the grammar more this time/ but concentrating on making less mistakes instead of speaking quickly)”

“Give it another go”

“Do you want one more chance before you get the final score”.

15. Remind them when you studied that point

For example, “Nearly right, but you’ve forgotten the grammar that we studied last week” or “You’ve made the same mistake as everyone made in the last test”. (see Appendix 2)

2.2 Correcting Without Hurting

Many teachers, especially if they are new to teaching ESL classes, may be a little intimated by the prospect of having to teach pronunciation. But, just like almost every thing else, if the process is broken down into small manageable steps, the task is not all that daunting. This site is an attempt to do just that- to break the process of teaching pronunciation down into smaller steps.

Why is proper pronunciation important? Because without correct pronunciation- no matter how vast the students vocabulary may be, no matter how well the student understands and uses grammatical rules, no matter what their level of reading or writing skills may be- if they don’t use correct pronunciation it may be very difficult for listeners to understand what they say. And that is a huge hindrance to communication. In addition, some research indicates that if a student can not pronounce a word correctly, they may not be able to hear it when spoken by another person either, which furthers hinders communication.

Students from different languages have different pronunciation difficulties. Not all sounds in the English language are common to other languages. For example, some languages do not have an ‘r’ sound, so students use a similar sound ‘l’ instead. So when a students says «What a lovely libbon», the native English is totally confused. Or maybe in a student’s native tongue there is no distinction between ‘b’ and ‘p’. Just imagine the misunderstanding that will result if a teachers says «I need to be on that bus» and the student hears «I need to pee on that bus».

When teaching pronunciation, teachers are giving feedback to their student about how they are saying things. This feedback includes what the problem is and what they need to do to correct it. This feedback may include where to place the tongue in the mouth to say particular words, or how the lips should be formed, or the action of the tongue when saying specific sounds.

Mastering proper pronunciation is not just a matter of learning individual sounds. Many students can hear and make the different sounds for all the vowels and consonants in English. Unfortunately, they also have to contend with the sound changes that occur with different letter combinations resulting from linking or reduction of vowels and consonants, not to mention stress, pitch, and intonation differences between their native tongue and English.

That’s basically all there is to teaching pronunciation- giving feedback and ensuring that the student uses the feedback to improve their speaking skills. That along with providing adequate practice to the students to hear the sounds and practice making the sounds. Remember (as some research implies) if a student can’t say a sound, they won’t be able to hear it either. [16,102]

2.3 Mistakes Made During Discussions and Activities

With oral mistakes made during class discussions, there are basically two schools of thought: 1) Correct often and thoroughly 2) Let students make mistakes. Sometimes, teachers refine the choice by choosing to let beginners make many mistakes while correcting advanced students often.

However, many teachers are taking a third route these days. This third route might be called ‘selective correction’. In this case, the teacher decides to correct only certain errors. Which errors will be corrected is usually decided by the objectives of the lesson, or the specific exercise that is being done at that moment. In other words, if students are focusing on simple past irregular forms, then only mistakes in those forms are corrected (i.e., goed, thinked, etc.). Other mistakes, such as mistakes in a future form, or mistakes of collocations (for example: I made my homework) are ignored.

Finally, many teachers also choose to correct students after the fact. Teachers take notes on common mistakes that students make. During the follow-up correction session the teacher then presents common mistakes made so that all can benefit from an analysis of which mistakes were made and why.

Written Mistakes

There are three basic approaches to correcting written work: 1) Correct each mistake 2) Give a general impression marking 3) Underline mistakes and / or give clues to the type of mistakes made and then let students correct the work themselves. (see Appendix 3)

Fuss

There are two main points to this issue:

If I allow students to make mistakes, I will reinforce the errors they are making.

Many teachers feel that if they do not correct mistakes immediately, they will be helping reinforce incorrect language production skills. This point of view is also reinforced by students who often expect teachers to continually correct them during class. The failure to do so will often create suspicion on the part of the students.

If I don’t allow students to make mistakes, I will take away from the natural learning process required to achieve competency and, eventually, fluency.

Learning a language is a long process during which a learner will inevitably make many, many mistakes. In other words we take a myriad of tiny steps going from not speaking a language to being fluent in the language. In the opinion of many teachers, students who are continually corrected become inhibited and cease to participate. This results in the exact opposite of what the teacher is trying to produce — the use of English to communicate. [17,52]

2.4 Problems of correcting students’ pronunciation

Look at these statements about correction of students’ oral work. What do you think?

Advanced students need loads of correction, beginners hardly any. When you start to learn a language you need to be able to communicate imperfectly in lots of situations, not perfectly in a few. The teacher’s job is to support learners as they blunder through a range of communicative scenarios, not badger them because they forget the third person -s. With advanced learners the opposite is usually the case.

The jury is out on the question of whether correcting students, however you do it, has any positive effect on their learning. There is some evidence, though, that time spent on correcting learners may be wasted.

Research into Second Language Acquisition has suggested that it may be that some language forms can be acquired more quickly through being given special attention while others may be acquired in the learners’ own time, regardless of teacher attention. This helps explain, for example, why intermediate learners usually omit third person -s just like beginners, but often form questions with do correctly, unlike beginners.

There is little point correcting learners if they don’t have a fairly immediate opportunity to redo whatever they were doing and get it right.

Learners need the opportunity for a proper rerun of the communication scenario in which they made the error, if they are to have any chance of integrating the correct form into their English. Whether the error was teacher-corrected, peer-corrected or self-corrected in the first place is of relatively minor importance.

Lots of learners and teachers think correction is important.

Is this because it helps them to learn and teach or helps them to feel like learners and teachers?

The problem with some learners is they don’t make enough mistakes.

Accurate but minimal contributions in speaking activities are unlikely to benefit learning as much as inaccurate but extended participation. Learners can be hampered by their own inhibitions and attitudes to accuracy and errors, the teacher’s attitude and behaviour (conscious or unconscious) to accuracy and errors or the restricted nature of the activities proposed by the teacher.

Teachers spend too much time focussing on what students do wrong at the expense of helping them to get things right.

When giving feedback to learners on their performance in speaking English, the emphasis for the teacher should be to discover what learners didn’t say and help them say that, rather than pick the bones out of what they did say. This requires the use of activities which stretch learners appropriately and the teacher listening to what learners aren’t saying. That’s difficult. [18,74]

Correction slot pro-forma

Here is a sample correction slot pro-forma which has been filled in with some notes that a teacher took during a fluency activity for a pre-intermediate class of Spanish students:

Pronunciation

I go always to cinema

She have got a cat…

Does she can swim?

Swimming bath my fathers

“Comfortable”

“Bag”– said “Back”

intonation very flat (repeat some phrases with more pitch range)

Bodega

Ocio

Yo que se

I don’t ever see my sister

Have you seen Minority Report?

Good pronunciation of AMAZING

Why use this pro-forma?

It helps teacher and students identify errors.

It helps you as a teacher to listen and give balanced feedback.

And how to use it ?

It has been divided into four sections. The first two, Grammar/Vocabulary and Pronunciation, are pretty evident and are what teachers look out for as ‘mistakes’ in most cases.

The third slot, L1, means the words that students used in their own language during the exercise. We believe that in a fluency-based activity, if a student can’t find the right word in English, they should say it in their own language so as not to impede the flow. An attentive teacher (who also knows her students’ L1) will make a quick note of it and bring it up later, eliciting the translation from the class. If you are teaching a multi-lingual class, you can still use this column. You don’t have to know the translations. You can prompt the learners to come up with those. [19, 48]

The ‘#’ column reminds us to include successful language in feedback. Too often in correction slots the emphasis is on what went wrong. Here the teacher can write down examples of good things that happened. This is especially true if the teacher notices that the students are using a recently taught structure or lexical item, or if they have pronounced something correctly that they had trouble with before.

Other suggestions

You can copy your filled-in version and hand it out to groups of students to save writing on the whiteboard. Or simply use it to help you note down language in an organized way.

You can fill out separate sheets for each group of students as you listen or even for each individual student (this would obviously work best with very small classes!). You can pass them round, have students correct their own, each others, whatever.

The advantage of using a set form is that by doing this, you keep an ongoing record of mistakes that can be stored and exploited for revision lessons, tests or as a filler for the end of a class. [20, 48]

Exercises for the Pronunciation of Plurals for English second language

One of the most difficult parts of learning to speak English is the correct pronunciation of plural nouns and verbs. Many of these words simply add a suffix such as «s,» «es» or «ed» to the original word, and this can be challenging for many English as a Second Language, or ESL, students to pronounce. The key to improving pronunciation of plurals is consistent practice and correction combined with listening.

Plural Noun Pronunciation with S Sounds

Plural nouns will end in either «s» or «es,» and can have an «s» or «z» sound. This exercise focuses on the «s» sound, which is used in nouns that end in an unvoiced consonant sound (e.g., ducks, tops, cats). Depending on the students’ native language, the biggest problem with pronouncing these words correctly is the two consonants that follow one another, like the «k» and «s» sound at the end of «ducks.» Many other languages consistently insert vowel sounds between consonant sounds, so «ks» might sound like «kuh-s» for some students. The key is to focus on flowing from one consonant sound to the next with no vowel insertion.

Write the words you wish to focus on for that day’s lesson on the board. Underline the consonant ending (e.g., underline «ts» in «cats») and pronounce it for the students as if it is one sound. Have each student repeat the sound. For fun, have them equate the sound to a sound effect. For example, «ts» sounds like a cymbal on a drum set. Choose a rhythm like «1 2 3 rest,» and have them make the sound around the room, keeping the rhythm. When the sound is comfortable, introduce more words that end with that sound until it becomes comfortable. [11,84]

Plural Noun Pronunciation with Z Sounds

If a noun ends in a voiced consonant sound, it will end with a «z» sound (e.g., chairs, beds, frogs). Use the previous exercise as a guideline for this one, but with a focus on the voiced z. To compare, have students place their hands on their throats. Make the «s» sound, feeling no vibration in the throat, then make the «z» sound, feeling the throat vibrate with voice. Explain that these words will use that «z» sound.

Choose words ending with a specific consonant like «d» or «g» that will require the «z» sound when pluralized. Follow the exercise above, creating a rhythm around the room with sounds like «gz,» until there is no vowel sound in between the consonants. When the students are making the sound successfully, begin adding in the rest of the word.

Plural Verb Pronunciation

The problem with plural verbs is similar to plural nouns; while the ending contains a vowel («ed») the «e» is often silent. Most students will be tempted to say «walk-eh-d» instead of «walk-d,» for example. The important thing is to explain to the students that while the ending is spelled «e-d,» it is usually not pronounced «ed.» In fact, the «d» is usually pronounced more like a soft «t.» For plural verbs, it’s best to have the students practice saying first the singular verb, then the plural in rhythm. Too often, ESL students give up on pronouncing plural verbs because their ears can’t hear the difference. For example, they say «Yesterday, I walk to the store,» because when a native speaker says the sentence, they can’t hear the «ed.»

To correct this, have the students perform repetition exercises with both singular and plural verbs side by side. «I walk. I walked.» Critical listening is essential for students before they can master the pronunciation, so speak and repeat constantly as a guide.

Below are tips for pronunciation activities you can do with your students, including links to printable resources and games and links to related web sites. Enjoy!

Poetry

Drama

Bingo

Contrastive stress

Pronunciation Partners

Humming

Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts

Poetry One interesting way to practice the rythmn or English, as well as such features as linking is to use poetry. One of the poetry web sites that we like is Academy of American Poets, which has a large collection of different poems, many with audio recordings made by the poet.

Walt Whitman’s poetry has also worked well with my students. Try the Poetry of Walt Whitman web site.

A neat poetry web site which even includes audio is actually the page for English 88: Modern and Contemporary Poetry at University of Pennsylvania. Check out the Gertrude Stein and Wi lliam Carlos Williams. [12,74]

Holly is a big fan of Haiku. It is a good way to have your students practice the concept of syllable. Holly not only has students read Haiku, but also write them.

Limericks can also be really fun and helpful. Their predictable stress pattern makes them useful for practicing sentence stress. You can find some (clean) limericks on the web at There once was a man from Nantucket. We’ve read some in class (clapping out the rhythm helps students pronounce the stressed and unstressed syllables), and for homework, they are working on creating their own limericks.

Drama Drama is also something Sharon used often with my students to practice rythmn, intonation, linking, etc. It’s often a good idea to have students work in pairs and focus on a particular aspect of pronunciation, su ch as intonation. Have them decide on the correct intonation, then record the scene, and finally listen and discuss their recording. The Dramatic Exchange Catalog of Plays is one good web sites to find scenes to use with your students.

Bingo One of our favorite activities for a change of pace is PRONUNCIATION BINGO!!! To play pronunciation bingo, first you need to think up a bunch of words that sound simiilar (bath, bass, Beth, Bess, bus, but, bat, path, pat, bit, pit, etc, etc). Now, make up a stack of cards with all your words and bunch of bingo boards (Sharon has a set of six, and she usually can use them with groups of 20— it usually doesn’t matter if some students the same board. Because it is rather challenging to distinguish between similar sounds, we normally don’t have more than one winner). For the really adventerous teacher, you can have the bingo winner read out the words for the next game. Here are word stress bingo and final consonant bingo boards for you to download and print out.

Contrastive Stress Practice. Here is another fun activity. Have students write 10 FALSE sentences. They could be about anything, as only as they are not true. Next have students read the statements to their pa rtner. The partner must correct each of the incorrect statements.

For example: «Christmas is in July.» «No, Christmas is in December .»

My students really like this game, especially when the false sentences are outrageous!

Pronunciation Partners. Put students in groups of 4-5. Deal 6 cards to each students and put the rest face-down on the table. Students take turns asking for a card they need to complete their set.

Get cards and detailed instructions from our printable resource page. [13,84]

Humming. Put students in pairs. Give student A a list of questions or statements. Give student B a list of replies. Student A should hum the intonation patterns of his utterances. Student B should reply with the correct response. We like to make sure that all of the sentences have the same number of syllables so that Student B really has to listen to the intonation to get the sentence. Example utterances:

Student A

Student B

I like pizza, pickles, and chips.

(list intonation)

Not all together, I hope.

Would you prefer coffee or tea?

(choice intonation)

Tea, please.

Would you like some ice cream and cake?

(double-rising intonation)

No, thank you. I’m not hungry.

Next week we are flying to Rome.

(falling intonation)

Really? How long will you be there?

Is he going to the dentist?

(rising intonation)

Yes. He has a toothache.

Pronuciation Scavenger Hunts.

These are so fun and successful that they deserve a section of their own.Segmentals. Ask students to find as many objects as they can with a specific vowel or consonant sound. If the weather is nice, send them outside. Bring in books or magazines with lots of pictures to stimulate their minds.

Conclusion

Speaking is so important in my opinion, in acquiring and using a language, and language-competence covers so many aspects. Phonetics, both theory and practice constitute the basis of speaking above all other aspects of language in my opinion. Speaking is a tool of communication. Many teachers, especially if they are new to teaching ESL classes, may be a little intimated by the prospect of having to teach pronunciation. But, just like almost every thing else, if the process is broken down into small manageable steps, the task is not all that daunting. This site is an attempt to do just that- to break the process of teaching pronunciation down into smaller steps.

Why is proper pronunciation important? Because without correct pronunciation- no matter how vast the students vocabulary may be, no matter how well the student understands and uses grammatical rules, no matter what their level of reading or writing skills may be- if they don’t use correct pronunciation it may be very difficult for listeners to understand what they say. And that is a huge hindrance to communication. In addition, some research indicates that if a student can not pronounce a word correctly, they may not be able to hear it when spoken by another person either, which furthers hinders communication. The students can then repeat the correct version or tell you what the difference between the two sentences was and why their version was wrong. Because the students don’t do much of the work in this way of being corrected, it might not be as good a way of remembering the correction as methods where you give more subtle clues. Its advantages are that it is quick and suits cultures, classes and students that think of elicitation as shirking by the teacher. It can also be more face-saving than asking them for self-correction, as trying to correct themselves risks making even more mistakes. The “right version” could mean the whole sentence or just the correction of the part that was wrong. In the latter case, you can then ask them to put it into the sentence in the right place and repeat the whole thing.

The best way is: while they are talking or reading in class, you shuldn’t interrupt them in the middle of the conversation or text. Let them finish first and then you can correct pronunciation mistakes by using those words and phrases frequantly in different ways, making students take part in activities too. Don’t directly correct the student who’s made a pronuncation mistake. This will cause him/her to lose self confidence and be discouraged.

Students from different languages have different pronunciation difficulties. Not all sounds in the English language are common to other languages. For example, some languages do not have an ‘r’ sound, so students use a similar sound ‘l’ instead. So when a students says «What a lovely libbon», the native English is totally confused. Or maybe in a student’s native tongue there is no distinction between ‘b’ and ‘p’. Just imagine the misunderstanding that will result if a teachers says «I need to be on that bus» and the student hears «I need to pee on that bus».

When teaching pronunciation, teachers are giving feedback to their student about how they are saying things. This feedback includes what the problem is and what they need to do to correct it. This feedback may include where to place the tongue in the mouth to say particular words, or how the lips should be formed, or the action of the tongue when saying specific sounds. One of the most difficult parts of learning to speak English is the correct pronunciation of plural nouns and verbs. Many of these words simply add a suffix such as «s,» «es» or «ed» to the original word, and this can be challenging for many English as a Second Language, or ESL, students to pronounce. The key to improving pronunciation of plurals is consistent practice and correction combined with listening.

Mastering proper pronunciation is not just a matter of learning individual sounds. Many students can hear and make the different sounds for all the vowels and consonants in English. Unfortunately, they also have to contend with the sound changes that occur with different letter combinations resulting from linking or reduction of vowels and consonants, not to mention stress, pitch, and intonation differences between their native tongue and English.

That’s basically all there is to teaching pronunciation- giving feedback and ensuring that the student uses the feedback to improve their speaking skills. That along with providing adequate practice to the students to hear the sounds and practice making the sounds. Remember (as some research implies) if a student can’t say a sound, they won’t be able to hear it either.

Bibliography

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2 Brown H. Principles of language learning and teaching. New York: Pearson Education. 2000. – p.365

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http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Dalton-Pronunciation.html

5 Fraser H. (1999). ESL pronunciation teaching: Could it be more effective?

Australian Language Matters, 7 (4). Retrieved on 14 October, 2004. – p. 136

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theories of second language acquisition. System, 25:1, 1997. – p. 103-112.

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Appendix 1

Useful language:

“Here are some things that people said in the last activity”

“I heard several people say this one”

“Can anyone correct this sentence? It has one missing word/ one word missing/ You need to add one word”

“The words are in the wrong order/ You need to change the words around/ change the word order/ mix the words up”

“This is a typical mistake for students from…”

“Don’t worry, even native speakers make this mistake sometimes/ every nationality makes this mistake”

“This mistake is something we studied last week”

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4