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Tianfei (Faye) Jiang & Peipei (Christina) Dong

Critical Review: Chun, C. W. (2006). An Analysis of a Language Test for Employment: The Authenticity of the PhonePass Test. Tianfei (Faye) Jiang & Peipei (Christina) Dong CTL 3799 Communication and L2 Learning in Workplace Prof. Julie Kerekes February 11, 2014. OUTLINE.

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Tianfei (Faye) Jiang & Peipei (Christina) Dong

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  1. Critical Review: Chun, C. W. (2006). An Analysis of a Language Test for Employment: The Authenticity of the PhonePass Test Tianfei (Faye) Jiang & Peipei (Christina) Dong CTL 3799 Communication and L2 Learning in Workplace Prof. Julie Kerekes February 11, 2014

  2. OUTLINE • Background & Context • Characteristics of the PhonePass test • Procedure • Setting • Frameworks • Analysis of the PhonePass test • Conclusion • Critique & Implications • Questions & Comments

  3. BACKGROUND • Global technology has quickly progressed to provide more accessible business modes of telecommunication, like telephone, video phone, emails and other internet/computer-mediated system in workplace. • Tests over telecommunication networks are usually highly commercialized..

  4. CONTEXT PhonePass Spoken English Test-10 (SET-10) • WHAT IS IT? An expedient assessment tool for screening job candidates’ ability in spoken English • WHAT IS IT FOR? Evaluating employees for promotions and measuring service employees with an accurate and objective test of their spoken English spoken capabilities. • HOW DOES IT WORK? This test is a 10 minutes spoken English test for non-native English speakers, which is administered over a language-line telephone and immediately scored by computer. It consists of 5 sections, based on four diagnostic subscores which includes sentence mastery, vocabulary, fluency, and pronunciation. The cost ranges from $25 to $40. • WHEN & WHERE IS IT? Anytime and Anywhere with a land-line phone system available. • HOW IS IT SCORED? The first four sections are recorded and scored by computers, while the last section is not scored, which is open for review.

  5. CONTEXT Purpose: to see if the characteristics of the domain of the test tasks found in the PhonePass SET 10 test correspond to real life domains of nontest tasks. • Key Words: telecommunication; spoken language test; authenticity;

  6. CHARATERISTICS IN PHONEPASS TEST • PROCEDURE (requiresemployee’s computer technology & telephone technology capabilities)

  7. CHARATERISTICS OF PHONEPASS TEST • SETTING

  8. CHARATERISTICS OF PHONEPASS TEST

  9. FRAMEWORK Authenticity • “the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test task to the features of a target language use task.” (Bachman & Palmer, 1996, p.23) • “the developers need to show that the content of the test tasks is representative of the demands of the corresponding task outside the test situation, and that the scoring reflects this.” (Luoma, 2004) • “authenticity of input, purpose, and outcome” (Lewkowicz, 2000) Test Fairness Framework “access, administration, validity, absence of bias, and social consequence.” (Kunnan, 2004)

  10. ANALYSIS: Authenticity

  11. ANALYSIS: Authenticity

  12. ANALYSIS: Authenticity

  13. ANALYSIS: Authenticity

  14. ANALYSIS: Authenticity

  15. ANALYSIS: Fairness

  16. CONCLUSIONS • The performance on these tasks does not necessarily predict or reflect the speaking ability of the test taker to function in real-life domain of workplace. • PhonePass SET 10 is considered relatively less authentic. • The test tasks are relatively less specific to a particular domain and are not interesting and engaging.

  17. CRITIQUE Strengths: • The author used strong theoretical basis to support his analysis. • It provides a valuable evaluation as a reference, emphasizing the importance of authenticity, to language assessment in workplace. Weakness: • This article does not offer further practical implication in telecommunication in workplace. • It would be better if the author provides more constructive suggestions to the phone language test.

  18. IMPLICATIONS • Since telecommunication lacks non-verbal compensation, such as body languages and facial gestures, the requirement of language is much higher than daily face-to-face communication. • This analysis brings readers to have more deep provoking thoughts about telecommunication networks, for example, how can we communicate effectively without these compensation, and how can we minimize the misunderstandings in telecommunication. • For employers, phone interview or language assessment via telephone should focus more on the authentic communicative competence than on linguistic performance. • Communication effectiveness is a critically important criteria in assessing individual's language ability in workplace. Standards for communicative language capability in workplace is needed to be further explored.

  19. Questions AND/OR Comments?

  20. ----- Tianfei Jiang & Peipei Dong • February 11, 2014

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