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 153 partner to equally contribute. So from the teacher's point of view, there should not be any concern about marks. All teachers who participated in the experiment were looking forward to the paired test results. If you think that a miracle happened to the pupils and students when they worked in pairs, and they all got good marks, you are wrong. Let us see the evidence. Firstly, both primary school teachers and myself found that test results were realistic. That is, the mean of the given marks was more or less the same as usual. So there is no "threat" to the good old bell shape curve which, due to many other factors, can be easily distorted. Secondly, one of the teachers administered the same test twice: first through individual work, and then through pairwork. She got very similar results: 3.80 for individual work and 3.75 for pairwork, which sounds convincing. Some more results are provided as shown in the table below: GROUP NUMBER MARKS MEAN 1 2 3 4 5 Form 3 6 pairs 0 0 1 0 5 4.300 Form 8 13 pairs 2 0 0 1 10 4.300 Form 9 8 pairs 0 0 4 2 2 3.750 Students 31 pairs 5 7 6 7 6 3.0645 AH 58 pairs 7 7 11 10 23 3.603 As we can see, test results are not significantly higher than they normally are in a mainstream group. Conclusion We have some limited evidence to show that pairwork does not influence the objectivity, validity and reliability of tests that otherwise are objective, valid and reliable. Provided that they are valid for individuals, they should be equally valid for pairs of students in the same group. Drawing a conclusion, however, is impossible without further investigation. In addition, paired testing is not likely to be adaptable for all assessment types. When looking at different test types we can see that placement tests, diagnostic tests and proficiency tests are designed for the specific purpose of gathering information about individual performance (Harmer, 2001). Moreover, very often there is a competition among candidates for a job, promotion or higher salary which would act against co-operation. Still, it