Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)

KATALIN LAZAREVICS Testing Written English through Pairwork

Testing Written English through Pairwork 151 Test designers today are striving to change the character of the tasks: once so popular multiple choice questions have gradually been replaced by more life like exercises to make candidates forget about the fact that they are being tested. Some of these tests bok like puzzles, riddles or interesting problems to be solved in the target language. Another, really promising, experiment is connected to oral testing: pairwork is used by some official language examination boards where the candidates are free to choose their partners. Each performance is assessed individually, which, according to the findings of Csépes (2003) is not influenced in any way by the partner's level of competencies. This kind of exam organisation can definitely reduce the level of stress and can create a candidate friendly atmosphere. Feasibility of Written Pairwork However convincing the practice of paired oral testing can be, pairwork for written performance sounds astonishingly strange. You can ask questions like "How do you make pairs? How can you find out how much each candidate knows? What about marks? Will everybody get a five, then? There will be noise in the classroom! What should a worksheet bok like?"

, and many more. With the kind help of co-operating colleagues, investigation was conducted in different school types and age groups last year to find out whether, and how, testing through pairwok made sense. It is a common fear that the points of score and, consequently, the mean will go higher, and the normal distribution curve will be deformed just because two co-operating people are supposed to produce better results than a single one. Experience La the experiment, language tests were written through pairwork in one German and two English groups of primary school students, and in several students' groups at college. Altogether 116 students (58 pairs) and four teachers were involved. This form of testing came as a surprise to the participants: they learnt about it on the spot. They were asked to form pairs and work with their partners. Surprisingly, test scores tended to give normal distribution, that is, points of score, percentages and marks did not seem affected by the mere fact of pairwork. The teachers themselves found that the results were not much different to the usual. Moreover, the German group took the same test twice: first individually and a second time through pairwork. The difference in marks was as low as 0.05 percent.