I would like to talk about the social networking site-- Fan Fiction (http://www.fanfiction.net/) we explored in class this week. Again, like many other websites, it proved to me that the internet could provide more possibilities and opportunities than we could ever imagine. The forums had such a wide coverage of movies, cartoons, books, and TV shows all around the world in this website, and there were so many people discussing, creating, cooperating, sharing, and communicating in it, which had made it look like a whole different world to me. It further amazed me when I found there were people discussing and rewriting popular Chinese TV shows from the 1990s in English. Without the development of technology, this level of exchange and collaboration would have been unimaginable. Now that we have so much help at our fingertip, we could turn the previously impossible into the possible, but how to get the best out of it remains as our own responsibility.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
About CATs
Douglas
and Hegelheimer (2008) gave a nice review of the developments in the use of
computer technology in language assessment, and there were two particularly interesting
points in their discussion I would like to reflect on here. First, as what the
authors have concluded, it seems that most argument and debate in this area
could be boiled down to "appropriate and inappropriate uses of CATs",
which mirrors the result of most of our classroom discussion; and "what
was once thought to be the wave of the future in language testing, that is,
computer-adaptive tests, has been tempered by the realization of the limits of
this particular technology", which reminds us the importance of not
getting overwhelmed by the ever-developing technology and throwing away
comparatively traditional but effective methods and practice.
Second,
the article mentions a research conducted by Cohen and Upton (2006)( as cited
in Douglas & Hegelheimer, 2008), which has found that "in general, the
test takers tended to approach the test tasks as test tasks rather than as
genuine reading tasks. In other words, they were mainly interested in getting
the correct answer rather than learning anything from the reading". Thinking
back, I have had the same problem when I was doing the internet-based test
practice to prepare for TOEFL when I constantly needed to resist the temptation
to click on the "checking results" button to get instant grading for
my answer without really caring about what I could learn from the reading
itself. However, on second thought, I would have done the same thing if I could
flip the paper and check my answer in pen-and-pencil language tests. Therefore,
is this a limitation of CATs only or a limitation for all forms of tests in
general. Because, in my opinion, once something is turned into a test, it is
human nature for people to focus on finishing the task correctly and pass the
test instead of the so-called deep thinking, regardless of whether it is
computer-aided or not.
Douglas,
D., & Hegelheimer, V. (2007). Chapter 6: Assessing language using computer
technology. Annual review of applied
linguistics, 27, 115-132.
Reflection on CATs and Fanfiction
Douglas and Hegelheimer (2008) gave a nice review of the developments in the use of computer technology in language assessment, and there were two particularly interesting points in their discussion I would like to reflect on here. First, as what the authors have concluded, it seems that most argument and debate in this area could be boiled down to "appropriate and inappropriate uses of CATs", which mirrors the result of most of our classroom discussion; and "what was once thought to be the wave of the future in language testing, that is, computer-adaptive tests, has been tempered by the realization of the limits of this particular technology", which reminds us the importance of not getting overwhelmed by the ever-developing technology and throwing away comparatively traditional but effective methods and practice.
Second, the article mentions a research conducted by Cohen and Upton (2006)( as cited in Douglas & Hegelheimer, 2008), which has found that "in general, the test takers tended to approach the test tasks as test tasks rather than as genuine reading tasks. In other words, they were mainly interested in getting the correct answer rather than learning anything from the reading". Thinking back, I have had the same problem when I was doing the internet-based test practice to prepare for TOEFL when I constantly needed to resist the temptation to click on the "checking results" button to get instant grading for my answer without really caring about what I could learn from the reading itself. However, on second thought, I would have done the same thing if I could flip the paper and check my answer in pen-and-pensile language tests. Therefore, is this a limitation of CATs only or a limitation for all forms of tests in general. Because, in my opinion, once something is turned into a test, it is human nature for people to focus on finishing the task correctly and pass the test instead of the so-called deep thinking, regardless of whether it is computer-aided or not.
Lastly, I would like to talk about the social networking site-- Fan Fiction (http://www.fanfiction.net/) we explored in class this week. Again, like many other websites, it proved to me that the internet could provide more possibilities and opportunities than we could ever imagine. The forums have such a wide coverage of movies, cartoons, books, and TV shows all around the world in this website, and there are so many people discussing, creating, cooperating, sharing, and communicating in it, which makes it look like a whole new world to me. It further amazed me when I found people discussing and rewriting popular Chinese TV shows from the 1990s in English. Without the development of technology, this level of exchange and collaboration is unimaginable. Now that we have so much help at our fingertip, how to get the best out of it is our own responsibility.
Douglas, D., & Hegelheimer, V. (2007). Chapter 6: Assessing language using computer technology. Annual review of applied linguistics, 27, 115-132.