发言专家：Cheng Xiaotang (程晓堂), Beijing Normal University
发言题目：What makes certain
language test items difficult?
This
presentation reports the results from a study that investigated what makes
certain English test items difficult. Data was collected from six published
reports on students’ performance in the English gaokao. All the challenging
test items discussed in the six reports were re-examined by the present
researcher to determine whether students’ poor performance on these items was
due to the design of the items or students’ lack of knowledge or skills.
Results showed that the majority of these tough items had problems in terms of
the design, such as having more than one plausible answer or no plausible
answer at all. Only a small number of the difficult items were found to have no
problems in terms of design.
专家简介：Cheng
Xiaotang （程晓堂）Ph.D. is currently a professor of applied linguistics at the School of
Foreign Languages and Literature of Beijing Normal University. He holds an MA
degree in language teaching and a Ph.D. in functional linguistics. He teaches
and researches discourse analysis, language education, syllabus design,
materials development, and teacher education. In the past years, he has served
as a key member of the English Curriculum Standards Panel and has been
extensively involved in English curriculum reform in China.
发言专家：Qu Weiguo (曲卫国), Fudan University
发言题目：Do we still need Standard
English? On the implications of politicizing English teaching
There was a time when we thought about
learning English, we would surely announce that we wanted to learn Standard
English, and we believed we knew for sure what variety and what standard were
referred to. But can we still be so sure now? Can we talk about Standard
English with an easy conscience?
We will discuss some postcolonial and
critical hypotheses that have significant impacts on EFL teaching. We hold the
view that politicizing English teaching in the EFL context has more negative
consequences because such politicization clashes with the purpose of EFL
teaching, which is to help students build up linguistic repertoire that can provide
them with linguistic choices for various translingual interactions. For all the
political complexities, Standard English is still the most important variety in
the unideal reality. In the discussion, we will also critique such concepts as
worlds Englishes and translingualism, arguing that the former, as an imagined
linguistic landscape, has reduced linguistic
diversity of the actual world to a virtual world of linguistic uniformity
whereas the latter, as a strategy in EFL teaching, weakens
students’ desire and ability to master English. In a word, in EFL teaching, English,
whose international use is only a historical contingency, can best serve us when
it is seen as a tool with which we can expand our linguistic capital in a multilingual
world.
简介：Qu Weiguo (曲卫国),
Professor of English, Fudan University. He was a Fulbright scholar at the
Department of English, Harvard University (2004), and has won quite a few
national and municipal awards for his teaching and research. His research
interest covers discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, rhetoric and
stylistics. Apart from publishing in Chinese, his publications in English
include papers that have appeared in College
Composition and Communication, Changing
English, English Today, Journal of Language and Intercultural
Communication, Journal of Second Language Writing, and books such as Introducing Argumentation (2005), Discourse Stylistics (2009) ,
Introducing Critical Thinking and Argumentation (2013) Re-orientation: trans-cultural, trans-lingual and trans-media studies
in narrative, language , identity and knowledge (2015), Politeness in Early Modern England
(2017), etc.
发言专家：Jin Yan (金艳), Shanghai Jiaotong University
发言题目：Context validity in
language testing: Test operations and conditions for construct operationalization
In
this presentation, the concept of context validity is revisited, and the
central role of contextually appropriate operations and conditions in construct
operationalization is highlighted through detailed case analysis. The
presentation starts with a review of the contextual facets in operationalizing
the construct of language tests. Two cases are then analyzed to illustrate how
test constructs can be operationalized through careful design and subtle
delivery of test tasks. The case of the Advanced English Reading Test
demonstrates how the construct of expeditious reading could be operationalized
through the specification of test operations and the manipulation of test
conditions. The second case of the College English Test—Spoken English Test (CET-SET)
shows the developer’s efforts to retain the construct of interactional
competence during the transition from the face-to-face group interview format
to the computer-based speaking test. The presentation ends with a discussion of
the challenges facing the test developer in extrapolating from task
performances to the performances in the target language use domain.
专家简介：Jin Yan （金艳） is a professor
of applied linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, China. Her research interests include the development and
validation of large-scale, high-stakes language assessments. She is currently
chair of the National College English Testing Committee and president of the
Asian Association for Language Assessment. She is also co-editor-in-chief of
the research paper Language Testing in Asia and sits on the editorial boards of
Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, and several other academic
journals.
发言专家：Derek Irwin,
University of Nottingham Ningbo China
发言题目：Audience interaction
for TESOL: a bilingual production case study
Teaching
language with drama has been an effective tool in the international English
classroom; it encourages oral fluency, comprehensibility, reduces anxiety,
encourages participation, and precipitates teacher development. Many studies
have confirmed the productive use of drama to teach English, but stemming from
this is the value of inter-cultural experience in the classroom environment.
This current study takes the foundation of these TESOL scholars and integrates
the theatrical notion of reception theory along with systemic functional
linguistic analysis to develop, produce, and implement a program for young
learners of English in the Chinese context. It achieved this by directing a
group of students from the University of Nottingham to adapt a traditional
Chinese tale from Journey to the West and then perform it to three distinct
audiences: Chinese middle school, primary school, and kindergarten students. In
doing so, the actors had to vary the balance of Chinese to English in the
production to maximize audience participation at varying levels of English
language knowledge. This talk will reveal the performances’ effectiveness and
examine how the techniques may be used both in and outside the classroom.
专家简介：Derek
Irwin is the head of the School of Education and English at the University of
Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) and is an associate professor of Applied
Linguistics. He is one of the coordinators of arts activities at UNNC, and has
worked with several high schools and universities internationally and in China
on theatre and arts events. Dr. Irwin is currently supervising Ph.D. and Ed.D.
students working in critical discourse analysis of political and literary texts
and gestural and multimodal analysis in learning and translation.
