[Corpora-List] Summary of Corpora in EFL testing

[Cameron Smart]

Dear All

A while back I asked:

"Could point me towards any publications related to the use of corpora and EFL testing?"

Thanks to everybody who sent replies.

Please find a summary below:

1.    Przemek Kaszubski directed me towards the use of Testbuilder for the development of vocabulary                 items, in:

2002. Aleksandra Wojnowska & Przemyslaw Kaszubski 'Corpus-informed exercises for learners of English: the TestBuilder program' - presentation at the workshop Language Technology, during International Conference Research and Scholarship in Integration Processes: Poland-USA-EU (INTER 2002), University of Lódz, Poland, 21 June 2002. 

at: http://main.amu.edu.pl/~przemka/przemek.html#INTER2002

2.    John Milton provided a link to some on-line exercises linked to the WordPilot concordancer  for self-testing/learning purposes:

at : http://home.ust.hk/~autolang/logic-a.htm

3.    David Coniam pointed me towards his own article which deals with the use of an analyzed corpus in the production of mc cloze tests:

 Coniam, David. 1997. A preliminary inquiry into using corpus word frequency data in the automatic generation of English language cloze tests. CALICO Journal, Vol. 16, Nos. 2-4, 15-33.

He also said that John Shillaw (working with Paul Meara) had been looking at calibrating (via Rasch) lexis from a corpus, i.e. a corpus-based approach to the testing of vocab.

4.    David Oakey said that Fiona Ball at Cambridge ESOL exams board (formerly UCLES), had given a presentation at BAAL 2002 on using wordlists in language testing and on the use of their learner corpus in item design http://uk.cambridge.org/elt/corpus/clc.htm.

David also mentioned that at the IVACS conference in Limerick, Barry O'Sullivan of Reading University presented some research using spoken test corpora. Lu Yang analysed 30 test events for a priori validation of the FCE speaking test, and Lindsay Brooks of the University of Toronto examined a corpus of 16 test events (tagged for function) to create observation checklists which allowed "real-time evaluation of language function use" on the IELTS speaking test. 

5.    Fiona Ball herself directed me to Cambridge ESOL's 'Research Notes', particularly:

Issue 6 (Nov 2001)  p.6 Using Corpora in Language Testing 
Issue 7 (Feb 2002)  p. 8        Research Projects relating to YLE (Young Learners English) speaking tests 
Issue 8 (May 2002) p.10 Developing wordlists for BEC (Business English Certificate) 
at http://www.cambridgeesol.org/rs_notes/index.cfm


Thanks again to everybody. In the meantime, if anybody else would like to point me towards any other research etc. going on regarding testing and corpora, please get in contact.

Cameron Smart
Hong Kong Examinations & Assessment Authority 



 


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Cameron Smart 
  To: corpora at hd.uib.no 
  Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 9:02 AM
  Subject: [Corpora-List] Corpora in EFL testing


  Dear All

  Due to a slight career shift, I now find myself in a virtually corpus-free working environment.

  I was wondering if anybody could point me towards any publications related to the use of corpora and EFL testing. Any advice/ personal experiences relating to the use of corpora in an examinations/assessment context would also be appreciated.

  Thanks in advance.

  Cameron Smart