Abstract
This chapter reports on the findings of a doctoral case study that investigates the correlation of the Bachelor of Education students’ speaking performance on the IELTS and in a class teaching situation. The B.Ed. program at the Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE sets IELTS band 6 as a graduation requirement that students must achieve before they start their final year of studies. This is meant to ensure that graduates have the minimum English language proficiency level to teach English in UAE schools. The research study adapts a mixed-methods approach and uses a corpus of students’ speaking records both on a mock IELTS speaking test and a class teaching situation. The quantitative strand of the research reveals that there is no correlation between the subjects’ lexical diversity in both contexts. The qualitative strand uses conversation analysis and shows that classroom interaction is very different than test interaction. Different classroom interaction features are found to account for those differences, but the most significant one is teacher repetition of lexical items in a class situation. The implication for IELTS test users and for students in an Education Program is that interpretations of test scores can be different than the actual language proficiency level demonstrated in a teaching situation. To bridge this gap, the researcher suggests a new assessment tool that merges IELTS band descriptors with the main features of classroom interaction so that correlation between the language test task and the language use is achieved. The new instrument is called Classroom-based English Language proficiency rubric.
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Khemakhem, S. (2021). A New Model for Assessing Classroom-Based English Language Proficiency in the UAE. In: Lanteigne, B., Coombe, C., Brown, J.D. (eds) Challenges in Language Testing Around the World. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4232-3_33
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