Использование блогов при изучении иностранного языка в высшей школе: проблемы оценки

Процедура и методы. В ходе исследования были использованы методы сравнительного анализа, анкетирования на основе компетентностного, личностно ориентированного и деятельностного подходов.

Результаты. В результате исследования была разработана схема оценки блоговой деятельности, сочетающая различные формы контроля и учитывающая существующие шкалы оценки учебной деятельности в рамках университетских программ обучения иностранному языку. Разработанная схема представляет собой цикл процедур оценивания, включающий качествен-ную, количественную оценки, различные виды обратной связи и самооценку. Для облегчения внедрения данной системы оценивания в образовательный процесс были разработаны шкалы оценивания и разделы студенческого электронного портфолио.

Теоретическая и/или практическая значимость. Результаты данного исследования могут быть использованы преподавателями иностранного языка высших учебных заведений при формировании программ обучения иностранному языку и включении новых информационно-коммуникационных технологий в образовательный процесс.

Ключевые слова: блоговая деятельность, компетентностный подход, балльно-рейтинговая система, качественная и количественная оценка, обратная связь, схема оценки блоговой дея-тельности, электронное портфолио студента

USING BLOGS IN FL HIGHER EDUCATION: CHALLENGES OF ASSESSMENT

E. Kytmanova

Moscow Region State University

Abstract

Aim. Blogging holds great potential for L2 learners' communicative competence development, but this type of activity remains poorly incorporated in formal education because of difficulties with its evaluation within the framework of the score-rating system of assessment adopted in Russian uni-versities. This paper examines the issues of assessment in modern pedagogical theory and practice, particularly focusing on blog assessment, and proposes a blog assessment scheme for FL tertiary education.

Methodology and Approach. The methodology of research includes analytical and comparative methods as well as competence-based, learner-centered and action-oriented approaches.

Results. A blog assessment scheme was designed comprising different forms of control and scales for higher education programmes. The designed scheme presents a cycle of evaluation procedures incorporating formative, summative assessment, teacher and peer feedback, and self-assessment. For the introduction of the scheme into classroom practice, competence-based assessment scales with illustrative descriptors and sections of student e-portfolio (blog portfolio) were developed. Theoretical and Practical Implications. The findings of the research can be used by lecturers of foreign languages in their designing educational programmes and integrating ICT in educational process.

Keywords: blogging, competence approach, score-rating system, formative and summative assess-ment, feedback, blog assessment scheme, student blog portfolio

Introduction

Blogs have become one of the most effective pedagogical tools for developing student writing skills in a foreign language. Like other ICTs blogs are widely used in modern teaching because they expand the classrooms being the forms of real-world activities. They raise learners' motivation, enhance their cognitive process and improve their communicative skills, on the one hand, but on the other hand - complicate assessment for educators. There is formidable research on blog didactic potential, but the problem of blogging assessment remains understudied, which probably leads to pessimistic claims of some scholars that `blogs as a learning tool are most successful where they are used a flexible, voluntary and loosely prescribed tools' and that `it is unlikely that blogs would be able to be an assessed element of education' [21, p. 97].

Meanwhile, for pedagogy this problem is of high importance as control in teaching is a powerful means of stimulating students' further development. Some attempts have been made by Russian educationalists to solve this problem by designing taxonomies of communicative language skills developed via blogging in FL class [13], introducing different scales of grammatical accuracy for personal and class blogs [12], proposing peer-reviewing focused not only on the content, but lexico-grammatical correctness, stylistic features and even punctuation of student blog posts [14], or using e-portfolios as a means of control and assessment of the quality and progress of student autonomous work [5]. The latter suggestion looks most promising as the authors proposed multiple criteria for the assessment: quality of the blog (expertise, self-assessment and peer assessment); quality of self-presentation (adequacy of language means and coherence), quality of vocation-oriented tasks (translation, inter-pretation, data search and analysis).

In spite of these findings some problems still remain. Firstly, it is the problem of the form of assessment. As blogs are not traditional forms of teaching, their assessment cannot be traditional. Traditional assessment in higher education includes examination and written tests, which are considered more as a tool for exposing mistakes and providing background for teacher judgement on student performance than the means of improving the learning process. Students resist this type of assessment in blogging activity. And it can be understood. Blogs are important not only as means of producing content, but building social relations between students' peers and the teacher. Besides, blogs promote active learning, reflective thinking, and more flexibility in learning process because they are meant not for guided but autonomous work. Even responding to the task students consider blog writing as social media. Many of them become quite sincere and open-hearted and react painfully to any form of judgement. Thus, the teacher should be very careful in providing his/her comments on students' posts, leaving aside the marks. Secondly, it is the problem of the object of assessment. The core of blogging in FL education is writing, but it also involves interaction in the form of commenting, reading (on part of the peers) or even speaking and listening (in case of audio or video blogs). All these forms of activities may become the focus of teacher assessment. And within the framework of each particular activity the level of student achievement and performance (communicative competence) should be identified and measured. Besides, blog activity can testify to the development of other competences (e.g. cognitive, reflective, critical thinking ICT competence). Should the teacher take them into consideration or shift the focus of control to communicative competence only? Thirdly, it is the problem of the status of assessment, which consists in embedding blog assessment into the scorerating system of student overall performance evaluation adopted in Russian working programs for academic disciplines.

The present paper aims to find the solutions to the above stated problems and propose a model of blog assessment by reviewing pedagogical literature on assessment in FL education and language assessment experience of Russian and world educators, considering standard requirements for FL proficiency levels and analyzing the results of student survey on blogging.

Literature review

Assessment vs Feedback. The problem of assessment is one of the most acute in pedagogy. Psychologists and educationalists have been discussing it for decades, and yet there is a lack of commonality in views. The main tenet is contradiction between necessity to guide, monitor and evaluate the learning process and to mildly support and develop the personality of the learner stimulating the growth of the inner structures responsible for self-control. The views on the problem vary depending on methodical principles and pedagogical approaches. Thus, knowledge-centered approach adopts summative assessment (also called quantitative), which summarizes all the evidence of student's achievement up to a given point.

This form of assessment can have different functions: checking, evaluating, motivating, stimulating, instructional, correcting, diagnostic, etc. (the full lists of which can be observed in the works of such scholars as E. I. Perovsky, Yu. Babansky, V. M. Polonsky, V. A. Slastenin), but the identification of their multiplicity neither makes the form flexible, nor changes its nature, merely affecting the choice of assessment parameters. Summative assessment is focused on judgement revealing a gap between student knowledge and skills and the requirements of the standard. It is not concerned with learner's personal growth or achievement development. This negative feature of summative assessment led to reconsideration of its value for education and promoted further search for adequate evaluation.

In the late 1960s in English-speaking countries, a distinction was made between summative (quantitative) and formative (qualitative) assessment. The latter comprises not only judgement, but also an indication of how student's work can be improved to meet the requirements. Formal assessment includes summative assessment, as clarifications and recommendations cannot be made without any judgement that precedes and stimulates them. Nevertheless, with the advance of learner-centered approach it was understood that assessment must not only be judgement on learner competence, but also feedback to guide learning.

An early reference to feedback as a mechanism of learning can be found in Wiener's treatment of cybernetics in his treatise on The Human Use of Human Beings (1950). Wiener's conception of feedback involves a dialogue between action and effect. The point is that feedback is not just information about performance but a process in which that information is somehow used to affect subsequent performance. But it was not until late 1980s when the central role of feedback was revealed in education. D. R. Sadler's famous definition says that information on student performance should be denoted feedback only if it is actually used to alter the gap between current performance and the performance aimed for [31]. Hence, feedback can produce any change in student learning if only students use it properly. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that a number of students do not use the feedback they receive, and therefore do not realize the potential of feedback for learning.

During recent years, voluminous research has been made into the problem of productive use of feedback in higher education, and the main obstacles to the use of feedback by students have been identified. One of the major barriers is that students do not find the feedback useful, if the revision of assignments is not asked for; another problem is the lack of congruence between students' preferences for feedback and the kind of feedback that actually seem to aid them [26]. Researchers also mark that students may lack understanding of the academic terminology the instructors use, but what is more important - they may lack strategies for productive use of feedback [20].

To cope with the situation educationalists began to search for the ways of improving the quality of feedback. Firstly, it concerned wording: feedback should be clear, not authoritative, motivating and explaining [34], less specific, but more personalized [26]. Another line of research stressed the importance of students' involvement in the assessment process and proposed peer-reviewing [16]. All these and other problems arose due to the change in the roles of educational agents and teacher-student relationships. With all controversy of opinions what was clearly understood was that feedback is not equal to either marking or comments, it is a dialogue between teacher and learners.

D. Nicol advocated a dialogical approach when designing feedback comments: `While the quality of the comments is important, the quality of the students' interaction with those comments is equally, and perhaps more, important' [30, p. 503]. So, students should play an active role in constructing meaning from feedback information. According to the author, the dialogical nature of teacher written commentaries (their qualities of being adaptive, discursive, interactive and reflective) should be restored to make feedback effective. Moreover, the teachers should inquire on what aspects students would like to receive feedback. In this case needs analysis can be both ends rewarding: being aware of students' most urgent points, the teacher can better formulate his / her feedback, and in reflecting on their needs, students can prepare themselves for better understanding of teacher's comments. Another aspect that enhances the dialogical nature of feedback is student-student interaction (peer feedback). When students regularly give feedback on the works of peers, they improve their understanding of the quality work and different criteria to judge about it.

Similar idea was expressed by D. R. Sadler who highlighted three conditions for effective feedback: students' capacity to be able to monitor the quality of their work, appreciation of what high quality work is and necessary evaluative and tactical skills to assess and modify their own work to perfection. The author argued that all this comes not through telling, but students' active interaction with feedback. To achieve this in students the teacher should not `teach, but provide them with lots of examples of quality works and criteria for their assessment. `The focus needs to shift away from the narrow issue how feedback can be improved and communicated, and towards the wider issue of how assessment (rather than feedback) can enhance student learning' [32, p. 56].

A multinational research The Impact of Feedback in Higher Education: Improving Assessment Outcomes for Learners (2019) suggested a new understanding of feedback in which the focus is shifted from the quality and timing of the comments teachers provide to how students become feedback aware. Feedback was defined as `processes where the learner makes sense of performance-relevant information to promote their learning' [23, p. 13]. What differs this definition from the earlier ones is that feedback is understood as a process, in which learners are active participants, and it is largely a cognitive process (the learners should make sense of informa-tion). The book contains some valuable recommendations for practicing teachers how to increase the impact of feedback, namely through raising learner feedback literacy (Carless), embedding feedback into the socio-cultural context (Esterhazy), turning self-assessment into self-feedback (Padero et al.), raising visibility of feedback with digital technologies (Ryan et al.).

In spite of the comprehensive literature on feedback some questions still remain for a foreign language teacher due to the complexity of the discipline. The major of them are: `Should feedback include or be opposed to error correction?, `Does feedback improve student communicative skills and language accuracy in the long term?', `What is the impact of peer-feedback on L2 learners?, `Does the use of social media (blogs) in L2 context enhance the feedback process?'.

Early L2 researchers argued that feedback on error was both discouraging and unhelpful [27; 33]. However, this opinion was not unanimous across different cultures: ESL students from cultures where teachers are highly directive, generally expect to be commented on their errors [25]. More recent research has largely confirmed the importance of written corrective feedback, and controlled studies show that feedback on specific linguistic features gives students an advantage over those receiving no feedback [17].

The results on peer feedback are mixed. Blog interfaces offer limited usefulness in highlighting mistakes when providing corrective feedback [18]. Nevertheless, as H. Huang remarks, blogs afford other types of feedback such as sharing ideas, answering questions and discussions [24, p. 44].

The ESL students greatly value teacher's feedback and rate it higher than peer-feedback [28]. As for peer-assessment, it is often resisted by students because they do not feel comfortable awarding grades to their friends and groupmates and are afraid of looking silly themselves. That is why peer feedback is usually more effective than peer assessment in a traditional class and especially in case of interactive e-learning: “Even when the ethos of the social software tools is to be collaborative, individual assessment may create competition among students and undermine the benefits of blogging” [29, p. 156]. Whereas other educators report that technology facilitated feedback enhances student performance as compared to conventional paper- based feedback [22].

Regarding the volume of works our review of literature on feedback and assessment is far from being exhaustive, but it gives general understanding of the situation in academia and classes worldwide. What can be surely concluded is that feedback processes are within assessment designs. Assessment is a broader phenomenon and all types of it (summative, formative and feedback) contribute to validity, reliability, and feasibility of student progress and outcomes evaluation. The matter is in proportion among the types depending on the activity which is assessed and the goals of assessment. As educational process involves interactions among key elements: curriculum, assessment and instruction and between key agents: teachers and students, assessment cannot easily be abstracted and examined without the reference to these components and should be embedded into curriculum design, become part of pedagogy and teacher-learner relationships.

Competence-based approach vs scorerating system of assessment. Since the change of educational paradigm (from knowledge- centered to learner-centered) and transfer to competence-based approach, Russian pedagogy has been in search of adequate means of assessment. One such innovation in the national system of education was introduction of the `score-rating system' of assessment which sporadically began in 1990s and became mandatory in 2003, when Russia joined the Bologna Process. The `score-rating system' was summoned to substitute the traditional five-point scale scoring system of assessment that had functioned in Russian higher educational institutions since the 18th century and is still in use at primary and secondary schools. In fact, the `score-rating system' has nothing to do with learner's position in class or group, but just another scoring system where the range of points is much wider than in the previous one (from 0 to 100) and the student has an opportunity to accumulate their points during the term. Though it brings some variety to the traditional forms of control (exams and tests) by introducing portfolios, projects, essays, case- studies and etc., it does not imply any new forms of assessment as the evaluation of the overall student performance is based on the same old-fashioned numerical basis.

Most of the authors of 2001-2010 years were quite enthusiastic about the `scorerating system' considering it effective in measuring student performance objectively and monitoring their achievements during the study process (not only at the end of it!), implementing regular control over both students and teachers, and as a result - raising the quality of education [11]. There was a mushrooming growth of `technological maps' for controlling and assessing student performance in L2 learning [7].

The authors of the next decade were more specific in identifying the educational gaps that the score-rating system could bridge. Thus, it was observed that the new system conformed to the `leading principles of monitoring, such as validity, reliability, consistency, regularity and transparency', and some educators reported `effective application' of the score-rating system in their university, though without presenting either scales or forms of assessment, proclaiming only that `the evaluation of vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, listening, and speaking is systematic, timely and transparent' [8, p. 54]. Other authors did not only share their experience of introducing the score-rating system, but revealed the problems connected with its embedding in the national higher education scheme. Some of them even exposed the drawbacks of the system consisting in impersonalization of learning, focus on the process and not on the result, which contradicted competence- based approach; outer, not inner motivation of students, overloaded syllabus and reduction of the outcome of university education to scoring figures [2]. S. M. Vopiyashina and A. N. Malyavina admitted that the new system of assessment is capable of increasing the efficiency of the educational process, but it often collides with old teaching methods and Soviet attitudes on the part of the teachers, and post-school inertia and passivity on the part of the students [4]. E. V. Burtseva and O. A. Chepak saw the main problem with the score-rating systemin the organization of educational process and specificity of Foreign Language as a university discipline. They argued that Foreign Language is a multi-facet subject and requires more aspects and criteria for assessment than other university disciplines. Nevertheless, in some universities the scoring system is rather rigid and badly organized across the curricula: the same number of assessment points should be distributed between listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar accuracy, to say nothing of the tasks meant for student creative development (projects, conference papers, etc.) within the domain of Foreign Language and between two or three tasks within the domain of another non-linguistic discipline [3].

When the majority of the authors were preoccupied with the problems of quantitative assessment, some educationalists became interested in working out the criteria and descriptors for qualitative control. Thus, L. V. Yarotskaya analysed the role of control as a structural component of the FL study programme and argued that the learner- centered approach requires new tools and mechanisms of monitoring the process of foreign language learning [15]. O. V. Baryshnikova considered the components of intercultural professional communicative competence and proposed new assessment tools in the form of socio-oriented technologies (business simulation games, project works, case-studies and professional task- based technologies) that can help teachers to grade the level of student performance [1]. A. A. Kolesnikov argued that both methods of assessment (qualitative and quantitative) should be used to provide a comprehensive evaluation of students' competences. Though the author provided a good set of tools for qualitative assessment, such as multilingual career-oriented portfolio, reflexive essay and reflexive map, he considered this form of evaluation `informal, which made it inferior to quantitative assessment and reduced its educational effect [9]. N. D. Golev, on the contrary, balanced qualitative assessment with quantitative and proposed a new system of assessment which he called nootheka. The latter is based on the learner-oriented approach and targets student self-control skills as the main pre-requisites for successful performance. Combining cumulative principles of measurements with design formats the new system prioritizes qualitative assessment as the final evaluation of students' achievements aims at grading the quality of their individual self-accomplished tasks [6].

Along with the search for new assessment means, domestic educationalists tried to find some other forms of control and focused on feedback. A. A. Korenev made a review of feedback-related studies in Russia and noticed that there is a dual-focus understanding of the phenomenon. On the one hand, feedback is levelled with information coming from students about their knowledge (just another form of qualitative control), and the best way to get it is interviewing. On the other hand, it is information coming from the teacher and needed by students to construct a view on their achievements or failures. A. A. Korenev admitted that in national pedagogy the accent is shifted from teacher feedback to student feedback [10]. We find this situation quite unsatisfactory, as traditional forms and means of control impede the development of learner-centered teaching methods, student autonomy and responsibility, motivating learning environment, and, in the long run, undermine the value of education.

Methodology

To design a blog assessment scheme comprising different forms of control and scales for higher education programmes, we grounded our principles on competence- based, learner-centered and action-oriented approaches, taking into consideration the systemic understanding of assessment as integrative process combining summative, formative and feedback forms used by both agents (teacher and learner) for the purpose of improving learners' performance, and raising the quality of education. The theory of feedback as a cyclic and dialogic process was basically the starting point for the development of the scheme.

The descriptors for illustrative scales were based on the CEFR requirements for B1-B1 + levels of language proficiency in written production and online interaction as well as on the Russian national standard in the field of teacher training. The alignment of these documents presented a considerable difficulty, since though they are built on the same principles (competence-based, learner-centered and action-oriented) and use `can do' de-scriptors, they differ greatly as to the degree of certainty and attitude to overall student performance. If the CEFR provides a detailed framework for designing curricula and assessment of each level of language learning, the Standard gives too broad characteristics of a competence that allows of a wide range of interpretations, whereas for practical purposes precision would look much better. For example, in our focal case The Federal State Educational Standard for Higher Education (Bachelor Degree in Teacher Education with two qualifications) requires from the Bachelor graduates to master the `ability for oral and written communication in the mother tongue and foreign languages to tackle the tasks of interpersonal and intercultural in- teraction' . As can be seen, the Standard sounds too vague and does not contain any specifications as to the level of proficiency or spheres of `interpersonal and intercultural' communication. The only obvious requirement is that the university graduate should have aptitude in both oral and written forms of communication. The types of actions (reception, production or mediation) are not specified either, but the focus is obviously made on interaction. We made an attempt to align this standard with the Framework. The mentioning of the mother tongue along with a foreign language can be treated as a hint to the level of proficiency: “as good as in the mother tongue” or “not lower than at the mother tongue level”, which corresponds to level C2+ in the CEFR. The task is next to impossible within the framework of Bachelor studies taking into consideration that some of the university applicants will have to master their A1+ level only for two years with a study load of four hours per week.

The next problem with the Standard is that it presents student overall proficiency as a set of multiple competences, some of them being loosely related to each other, and putting aside such components of proficiency as activities and strategies. That is why when university departments distribute different competences among curricular disciplines, they inevitably make mistakes and miscalculate the expected outcomes of the educational process. To avoid this in our assessment scheme we proceeded from holistic understanding of student language proficiency adopted in the CEFR.

To incorporate learners into the scheme, needs analysis was carried out based on the qualitative data collected through student interviews and questionnaires on their four- month blog writing experience. The participants were junior education students in the field of Russian philology and the English language. Most of them were female at the age of 19-21. It was a mixed-skill group and their level of language proficiency varied from B1 to B2+. The students were asked to write in a free form what they liked/did not like about educational blogging and what improvements, if any, they could suggest.

Results and discussion

Blog assessment scheme. Based on pedagogical ideas concerning nature and forms of assessment and dual function of blogs being an on-line diary and a medium for providing commentaries from a more diversified sources and on a larger scale than it is possible within a traditional education, a blog assessment scheme was made to facilitate university teacher control over student learning activity.

1 Council of Europe. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

For the assessment procedure we chose two-point and three-point grades on the grounds that not all the competences are equally important in a particular activity. From Table 1 it is clear that the accent is put on range and accuracy whereas other competencies are subsidiary. Again, the choice is in the teacher's hands, as he / she can judge about the particular situation better. In fact,

the scheme is open to negotiation, and some educators would argue for including ICT competences or cognitive skills competences into it. In some cases, it is justified, but we should not forget that the scale represents a rigid set of requirements for the resulta- tive assessment of student performance in a particular activity, and it should be made in strict accordance with the Standard.

The next scale we are going to present as an illustration of our principles (see Table 2) was particularly designed for a class blog of the third-year education students in the field of Russian philology and the English language. We proceeded from the assumption that all parts of educational process are interconnected and before deciding on the proficiency assessment we should consider the following: the type of real-world activity the students are going to be involved in, the level of student proficiency as a starting point for their development, the sort of tasks set before them, the expected outcomes, and finally the forms and conditions of the learning process.

The notion of language proficiency presented in the CEFR rests on two pillars, quantity (what the learner is able to do) and quality (how well the learner is able to do it), which are interwoven. The descriptors for communicative activities (quantity parameters) can also contain hints at the aspects of proficiency related to particular competences (quality parameters) and vice versa. Hence the educator has to calibrate different scales to identify the goals and prospective achievements for learners, as well as the assessment criteria for their performance.

As blogs provide two types of activities: written production (online posting) and online interaction (commenting) we consulted the CEFR as to what students can do in these activities. Assuming that the level of our students was B1, we marked their strategic development during the term up to B1+ level. The extension of the CEFR, the CEFR Companion Volume (2018), contains a new set of descriptors concerned with online interaction, collaborative learning and intermediate levels like B1+. The difference between B1 and B1+ learner in online interaction is in quantity (the range of topics, number of participants) and in quality (accuracy, fluency and the level of interaction: from mere respond to recognition of communicative intentions of contributors). B1 learner can produce `personal online postings' on `familiar topic of interest' and individual response to the comments of others in postponed time, `provided that he/she can prepare the text beforehand; he/she has `lexical limitations' causing repetition and `inappropriate formulation'. B1+ learner can post `accounts of social events', interact with `more than one participant' in real-time online discussion and recognise `the communicative intentions of each contributor' Council of Europe. Common European Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Compan-ion Volume with New Descriptors, 2018, p. 97. Avail-able at: https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume- with-new-descriptors-2018/1680787989 (accessed: 04.02.2012).. Summing up this, we can make a conclusion that asynchronous communication of the class blog format is quite comfortable atmosphere for B1 learner (there are time lapses between the messages and everything can be prepared beforehand), but in comparison with the individual blog format it is a bit challenging and can be considered as a platform for future online discussions and forums with a wider range of topics (mostly social) and greater number of participants. Thus, through blogging B1 learner has a chance to improve his/her skills to B1+ level. Therefore, we included social skills into the scale naming the criteria for their assessment as `Conventional awareness' and `Communicative drive'. As Table 2 shows, the former criterion indexes to student ability to behave properly in online community, and the second one meets the requirement of the standard to increase the number of interlocutors in online interaction.

The difference between B1 and B1+ levels in written production (creative writing) is in the genre of work: for B1 learner it is a story, description of an event, account of experiences, but for B1+ learner it is a simple review of a film, book or TV programme Council of Europe. Common European Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Compan-ion Volume with New Descriptors, 2018. Available at: https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new- descriptors-2018/1680787989. (accessed: 04.02.2012).. Taking into consideration that students are supposed to enlarge the circle of the topics they can write about and summing it up with the necessity to introduce new genres, we can set a task of writing a review of the film (which is both a social topic and new genre) in their blog posts. The next range of descriptors will depend upon this task specifying the quality of the work.

The descriptors for B1 level in general linguistic range characterize the learner as having `enough language to get by, with sufficient vocabulary to express him/herself with some hesitation and circumlocutions on topics such as family, hobbies and interests, work, travel, and current events, but whose `lexical limitations cause repetition and even difficulty with formulation at times'. B1 + learner is more spontaneous in speech, as he/she has `a sufficient range of language to describe unpredictable situations, instead of circumlocutions his/her language is precise and rich enough to `express thoughts on abstract or cultural topics such as music and films' Council of Europe. Common European Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Compan-ion Volume with New Descriptors, 2018. Available at: https://rm.coe.int/cefr-companion-volume-with-new- descriptors-2018/1680787989. (accessed: 04.02.2012).. The distinguishing feature of B1 + learner in the field of grammar is a step made from recalling `prefabricated' expressions to the capacity to formulate thoughts. B1 learner deals with more predictable situations (he/ she uses the structures) and can show more accuracy if the context is familiar, but the errors of B1+ learner should not impede the communication.

The next two criteria are socio-cultural and pragmatic. The first one, marked as `sociolinguistic awareness', was included to assess students' ability to make a distinction between formal and informal registers, which is of paramount importance for L2 learner, as students generally enjoy the atmosphere of an unconventional talk, but do not know that it also has its restrictions. The CEFR provides descriptors for B2 level only, but we thought that they can be adopted for B1+ learner. The second criterion combines `relevance', which measures student's ability to write to the point and correlate the contents of the text with the task, and `cohesion' helping the teacher to assess the connectedness and logical consistency of the student's text.

Thus, our control assessment scale is norm-referenced and has a form of examination rating scale built by defining a descriptor for each relevant criterion which describes the desired standard or norm for a particular competence. That descriptor was adopted as `Pass' or `2' (in some cases `1') and the formulations of `1' and `3' show the lower and the higher proficiency level correspondingly.

Table 2 Blog activity assessment scale with illustrative descriptors (Designed by the author)