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Implications of Assessing Military Writing Skills Within the Framework of STANAG 6001

This article discusses the implications of assessing military writing skills within the STANAG 6001 framework. It covers topics such as testing purpose, testing construct, generalizability, face validity, content validity, authenticity, test designer expertise, rating methods, and test-taker heterogeneity.

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Implications of Assessing Military Writing Skills Within the Framework of STANAG 6001

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  1. Implications of Assessing Military Writing Skills Within the Framework of STANAG 6001 David Oglesby & Olga Sotirova

  2. Implication #1: Testing Purpose General Language Proficiency Language for Specific Purposes STANAG test developers need to construct a general proficiency test to assess the English-language writing skills of military and civilian personnel within NATO.

  3. Implication #2: Testing Construct Language Ability Language Ability + Topical Knowledge Language Ability or Topical Knowledge Test designers have three options for defining the construct to be measured, with respect to topical knowledge – without, with, or separately (Bachman & Palmer, 1996)

  4. Implication #3: Generalizability Underestimated Balanced Overestimated STANAG test developers must find an approach which will lead to the assessment of abilities that underlie communicative performance which will be generalizable from one situation to the next and from the test situation to non-test target situations. (Douglas, 2000)

  5. Implication #4: Face Validity STANAG Writing Test ORIENTATION You’re writing to your pen pal in the UK. Quack, 2, 3, 4 Prompt A Describe the most important piece of equipment in your job, and explain its importance. Prompt B Considering international conventions and laws of war, analyze and elaborate on the moral ramifications of engaging an enemy force inferior in size and equipment. Writing proficiency tests with military themes or contexts hold great appeal for STANAG testers because of the preferences of test candidates and the perceived needs of test users.

  6. Implication #5: Content Validity Wide and Unpredictable Sample Narrow and Predictable Sample . Writing samples involving exclusively military contexts, subjects, and tasks prevent STANAG testers from inferring more general language abilities.

  7. Implication #6: Authenticity OPORD STANAG Writing Test SITUATION Analyze enemy capabilities and probable actions. ORIENTATION You’re writing to . MISSON A clear, concise statement of what the unit is to do. Prompt A Describe a natural disaster you’re familiar with, and explain the dangers associated with it. EXECUTION What is the Concept of Operation?. Prompt B Describe the circumstances under which a population’s humanitarian assistance needs supersede a State’s sovereignty. Explain your reasoning. SERVICE SUPPORT Identify refueling and damaged vehicle collection points. COMMAND & SIGNAL Describe comms maintenance and command succession. The degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language task to a real-life domain task is crucial for the prediction of test-takers’ future performance. (Bachman and Palmer)

  8. Implication #7: Test designers – language or content area specialists? Acceptable evidence is achieved in cooperation with professionals from a certain field, which creates a sense of ownership in the process and ensures that the findings are generalizable to that field as a whole.(David Watt and Andreea Cervatiuc, EALTA conference, Athens, May 2008)

  9. Implication #8: Rating writing – holistically or analytically Holistic Rating Analytical Rating The issues of subjectivity, practicality and fairness in rating writing – is your rating scale related to my real language and topical knowledge???

  10. Implication #9: Heterogeneity The vast range of STANAG 6001 test population with respect to origin, age, gender, nationality, education, past experience, native language, etc. challenges the creation of a test-taker’s profile.

  11. ΣΤΑΝΑΓ 6001

  12. Answers?

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