Students’ foreign linguistic competence testing and evaluation in Ukraine of the late XX-th the early XXI-st century

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Students' foreign linguistic competence testing and evaluation in Ukraine of the late XX-th the early XXI-st century

Lichman L.Yu., PhD in Pedagogics, Associate Professor,

Head of the Department of Foreign Languages

Shupyk National Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education

Лічман Л.Ю. Оцінювання та оцінка якості іншомовної компетентності студентів в україні кінця XX початку XXI століття

У статті досліджено проблему оцінювання якості формування іншомовної компетентності у ВНЗ України. Зазначено та обґрунтовано принципову відмінність між результатами мовної підготовки студентів і зразковою (еталонною) формою іншомовної компетентності, яка створюється соціальнокорпоративною системою. Проаналізовано основні методи контролю якості лінгвістичного навчання. Намічено перспективи комплексного вдосконалення процесу оцінювання та оцінки в лінгводидактиці.

Ключові слова: іншомовна компетентність, оцінювання, оцінка, кредитномодульная система навчання, стандарт.

The article focuses on the issue of testing the quality of building foreign linguistic competence in the higher school of Ukraine. The fundamental difference between the students' language training results and the standard foreign linguistic competence, created by the social and corporate system is identified and grounded. The main methods of language training quality control are analyzed. This article briefly reviews the prospects for the comprehensive improvement of testing and evaluation in the language education.

Key words: foreign linguistic competence, testing, evaluation, credit-based modular learning, standard.

В статье исследуется проблема оценивания качества формирования иноязычной компетентности в ВНЗ Украины. Обозначается и обосновывается принципиальное различие между результатами языковой подготовки студентов и образцовой (эталонной) формой иноязычной компетентности, создаваемой социально-корпоративной системой. Анализируются основные методы контроля качества лингвистического обучения. Намечаются перспективы комплексного совершенствования процесса оценивания и оценки в лингводидактике

Ключевые слова: иноязычная компетентность, оценивание, оценка, кредитно-модульная система обучения, стандарт.

The competency-based approach in language education is one of the most pressing and widely discussed didactic challenges in Ukraine. The integration into the European cultural and economic community, the European Union Ukraine association agreement signing and ratification, labor market and technological standards unification, and finally, the intensive migration from Ukraine (mainly the labor one) all the mentioned above has had a significant impact on the educational system of Ukraine, before everything else, regarding the implementation/incorporation of a competency-based strategy for training students in the secondary and higher school Ukraine.

Meanwhile, in the language education, the issue of competency-based training calls forth strong opposition, which reveals the discussion point theoretical divisiveness and the complexity of its practical implementation, as evidenced by the national and foreign researchers (N. Bibik, L. Biriuk, N. Chomsky, G. Karlovska, L. Kravchuk, A. Khutorskoy, T. Lytniova, L. Lichman, O. Ovcharuk, О. Okolovych, O. Pometun, S. Trubacheva, Zimnyaya and others).

1. Having analyzed the archive documentation, regulatory materials, dissertations and publications in periodicals, we found the idea of competencybased training in Ukraine of the late 20th century to be widely relayed and developed. The competencybased approach definitions, content and implementation were especially actualized. Among them, one of the key, fundamentally significant aspects was emphasized: the language competencecentered education monitoring and estimated result. The aspect has been the site of special scholarly interest (O. Vakulenko, S. Vitvytska, V. Davydov, A. Zilbershtein, I. Zimnyaya, V. Kremen, O. Lokshyna, L. Movchan, S. Nikolaeva, V. Panchenko, S. Savchenko, N. Talyzina, M. Khrebet and others).

2. The close attention to such important problems is far from being by chance. After all, practically substantiated, adequate and correct testing and evaluation of the final results determine a lot of things.

3. It is due to the testing that the compliance of two highstakes markers, i. e. foreign linguistic competence building results and foreign linguistic competence standards, built up by the social and corporate (professional) environment, can be identified. student foreign linguistic testing

From this point of view, the function of testing and evaluation involves determining, first, the quality of language training results, second, the qualitative indices of graduates' foreign linguistic competence standards, third, the content difference (distance) between the indicators of the result and the standards. To designate the main markers, i.e. to accurately analyze and exactify qualitative indicators a) result, b) standard and c) the nature of consistency/inconsistency between them opens up opportunities for systematizing the obtained data with the purpose of improving the didactic resources to reduce the discrepancies between the built and required levels of foreign linguistic competence.

Thereby we denote the definitive distinction between two forms of a foreign linguistic competence: the built foreign linguistic competence (training outcome) and the required one (standard language obtained from the inmost recesses of professional activity). At the same time, we emphasize that the gap between the mentioned forms of a foreign linguistic competence is quite organic, natural, primarily because of the constant change in social demands crystallized in the standard language parameters; the standard language is infinitely dynamic and abundantly indefinable. Therefore, it should be started from the definitive distinction between the language training results and a linguistic/foreign linguistic competence as such, which is constantly updated, as if fuelled by the social and corporate reality. Put the other way round, it can be assumed that the result is potential for achieving the required foreign linguistic competence, or a relative value, whereas a standard language is the nonpermanent, but periodically absolute value of linguistic competence. In this sense, the education outcome and an absolute, but “fluid”, competence, as an intermediate socially created standard, are dialectically united.

It is worthwhile to specify that a foreign linguistic competence, built as a socially determined standard, is most notably disclosed in such regulatory documents as skills standards. The latter are the basis for modelling and compiling the credit-based modular architectonics of the academic and steering programs and plans.

The standards towards competences are supposed by P. Hager to be considered amid the labor market, attending to the quality, skill, workmanship for compartmentalizing in the personnel and establishing justice in making an assessment of workforce contingent. Indeed, as the author notes, the competency-based standards should be considered along with “the underpinning constituents of competence (capabilities, abilities, skills)”, i.e. the attributes of “people to be competent performers” [1, p. 425].

Thus, in language education, the result of foreign language training, that is the linguistic level of a graduate, is directly associated with the future work activity, which is regulated in accordance with the standards. Therefore, the evaluation of the training outcome is formed with due regard to the qualification requirements. In this case, the evaluation “will serve as a link between the requirements of professional standards and learning outcomes, achieved through the absorbed academic program. Testing is the process of data acquisition concerning students' activities and opinion creation as for these data based on the predefined criteria. Testing the embraced module quality presumes demonstration or a testament to the fact that the student has mastered the necessary competence, formulated in the each individual module, and it can perform all necessary procedures” [2, p. 221].

Testing and evaluation of foreign language learning quality in Ukraine is considered as an integral part of the complex of academic performance rating, as an important component of the language education monitoring. In accordance with this, depending on the kinds of monitoring, there distinguished feedback, evaluation, training, developing, correcting, stimulating, etc. control functions [3, p. 1]. At that, according to M. Khrebet, “by its arrangement, the control may be individual or frontal/group; by the nature of the response design it may be verbal or written; by the use of the native language it may be monolingual and bilingual” [3, p. 3].

Analyzing the foreign-language training testing and evaluation procedure genesis in the higher school of Ukraine makes it possible to single out three points: first, in the beginning of the 1990s, the Soviet tradition of academic performance rating dominated, which was substantially modernized during “perestroika” (rebuilding); second, as far as grading in education and Bologna educational doctrine mechanisms, including the credit-based modular system elements, gradually introduced, the experts simulate and increasingly differentiate the learning quality testing, when creating the academic programs; third, progressively as competency-based education is implemented, the testing modus in the credit-based modular system is endowed with competency-based attributes.

In the early 1990's, there were mainly used methods of monitoring and evaluating the attainment level traditional for the Soviet higher school system, namely, zero (the first year) and intermediate measures of foreign language proficiency, dictations, translation, abstracting, tests and term papers, etc. Apart from that, due to mastering human-based and technologically advanced educational innovations, such as student-centered education, the method of intensive language learning/ teaching, communicative method, suggestopedia, etc., the assessment methods array significantly expands. For example, the training groups segmentation subsequent to the results of pretested linguistic knowledge and abilities assessment are in common practice [4]. That approach made it possible to divide the group of students into two parts highachieving students and the lowperforming ones, so that the former held down the potential, while the latter had the opportunity and motivation for growth towards the highachieving students' level. The streaming was based on premidterm testing results, i.e. at a basic course [5]. This testing practice made it possible to target the educational process in such a way that a teacher and students' work was corrected, the individual solution to the problem of improving students' knowledge was found at the midpoint assessment. It was increasingly evident that that method required updating steering documents, compiling new program layout, current checkup tests. Also, if a student moved from the elementary group to the advanced one or vice versa, there occurred a need to develop a new scoring system that would be a relatively objective performance criterion [6]. Thus, in the 1990's, there was widely practiced a differentiated approach to assessing the linguistic potential of students, thereat it was observed the need for applying the same approach to testing the holders of a master's degree and postgraduate students [7].

In the late 1990's, a rating system for assessing students' language proficiency was introduced in the higher school of Ukraine. This system assumed that evaluating student performance relied on the test score at a fixed grade. At the same time, there were developed no evaluation criteria to be used in all the universities of Ukraine. The same is true for now. Evaluating student performance largely depends on teachers' subjective assessments, although the subjectivity threshold in the modular rating system is lowered than that in the traditional fivemark grading system; the staff members were bound to detail the methods of ranking score through their individual efforts. For example, the matter concerning students' language proficiency ranking score methodology success was brought forward at the meeting of the Department of Foreign Languages of Zaporizhia State Technical University (record № 3, dated November 23, 1999) [8]. The discussion and the educators' reports formulated the following ranking score model associated with the traditional evaluation system:

5070 scores “fair”,

7190 scores “good”,

91100 scores “full mark”.

At the same time the scoring was supposed to depend on the absence rate, that was particularly true in the students' 2nd, 3d, 4th and 5th years. When carrying out various types of midpoint assessment, the teachers used a wide range of tasks, in particular, translation from a foreign language into Ukrainian, abstract of a Ukrainian paper, an interview and lexical and grammatical testing.

By comparison: nowadays under the creditbased modular system the numerical scorestoevaluation ratio has been somewhat transformed. When organizing formative, modular, semester and summative assessment, the educators mainly use in different versions the following evaluation scheme in accordance with the ECTS grading scale, but taking into account the national scale of student performance:

90100 scores A (according to the ECTS grading scale) “outstanding performance with only minor errors”;

8289 В “above the average standard but with some errors”;

7481 C “generally sound work with a number of notable errors”;

6473 D “fair but with significant shortcomings”;

6063 E “performance meets the minimum criteria”;

3559 FX “Fail some more work required before the credit can be awarded”;

034 F “Fail considerable further work is required” [9].

Certainly, the pivot to the creditbased modular system, the opening to the Bologna educational space, contributed to clarifying and regulating testing and the control process. The credit-based modular system introduction was regulated by a number of the decrees of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (“On Pedagogical Experimentation in Educational Process Arrangement Credit-Based Modular System”, dated 23.01.2004, № 48; “On Authorizing Action Program For Bologna Declaration Implementation in the System of Higher Education and Science of Ukraine 20042005”, dated 23.01.2004, № 49; “On Special Aspects of Introducing Educational Process Arrangement Credit-Based Modular System”, 20.10.2004, № 812; “On

Introducing the Educational Process Arrangement Credit-Based Modular System”, dated 30.12.2005, № 771, “On Authorizing Action Program For Quality Assurance in the Higher Education of Ukraine and its integration into the European and World Education Community: the 2010 Agenda”, dated 13.07.2007, № 612, “On Implementing the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System” and guidance materials “Implementing ECTS in Ukrainian Universities”, dated 16.10.2009, № 943.

Here it may be noted that within scientific and educational meaning, a module “is understood to mean a complete repertoire of expertise, knowledge and skills (i. e. competencies) subject to be taken, described in the manner of requirements for a student to meet them upon the module completion” [2, p. 211]. In fact, the credit-based modular system has introduced a strictly regulated, objective, evaluating monitoring into the language education. Therefore, introducing this innovation can be recognized as the first step towards implementing a competency-based structure of monitoring and evaluation.

At the same time, since the launch of the creditbased policy the linguistic departments of the various higher educational institutions of Ukraine have pursued its introduction at discretion: some educational institutions, training and steering documents focus on upgrading students' foreign language skills, taking into account their specialization and individual needs, interests, etc., while the methodological support in the other ones is aimed at building designated competences of various linguistic specificity technical translation, navigation, metallurgy, etc. At this, that's important, the competence-centered programs directly correlate with the qualifications framework and professional standards, wherein the basic parameters of required special competences/competencies are explicitly stated. In this case, building foreign linguistic competence, ideally, tightly bounds to mastering a particular package of speciallycorporate competences.

However, in practice, experts face many difficulties while developing modules. The main one is the lack of experience in compiling competence-centered modules, in consequence of which some teachers get the impression that “the competency-based moduleactivity programs consist of a package of manipulable modules, which can be interchanged, including the new or excluding the old ones” [2, p. 205].

Therefore, according to the experts' opinion [2, p. 208], the highpriority task for making a national modular training strategy, including students' language training, is creating design standards to regulate teachers' “stepbystep” activity and specify skills and knowledge in determining modules. Hence, specific skills and knowledge will be identical to specific competences/competencies, whose sum outlines the entire professional competence.

Against this background, the problem of assessing learning experience, aimed at acquiring certain competences, is particularly apparent. When planning and developing the evaluation of competency-based learning, teachers should:

“1) expressly understand and design the learning outcomes for each particular modular action (specific competencies achievement);

2) develop criteria for evaluating a module, therein addressed the evaluation method;

3) project evaluation of current module performance, thought over the criteria;

4) develop an evaluation checklist for a student;

5) develop evaluation tasks for the current assessment of skills and knowledge” [2, p. 209].

Thus, the retrospective analysis of monitoring, testing and evaluation in the language education of Ukraine (the end of the 20th century 2017) shows that the monitoring problem can be considered in four aspects at least:

a traditional fivemark grading system, involving timely instructional elements, tests, to begin with;

a point rating system of student linguistic performance, combined with the traditional fivemark grading system (19912004);

a credit-based modular system (since 2004);

a modular competency-based learning technology (since 2004).

Going forward, developing the higher school language education should be concentrated, first of all, on the development and expansion of linguistic specifications in the morphological, orthoepic, lexical, stylistic and phonetic teaching/learning framework. This specification should be created in accordance with, first, the national framework of qualifications, second, professional standards, third, employment situation and employers' demands, fourth, key global competencies parameters, fifth, forecasts and trends in the national social system development. The detailed specification package will correspond to the hierarchically arranged complex of competencies which make up the competence model of a certain specialty and assign an operation algorithm for a language personality in specific social and corporate environment.

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