My country has a high-stakes multiple-choice exam that everyone should take in order to get admitted to universities. The students who want to study a foreign language should take the general English test, composed of multiple-choice questions in grammar, vocabulary, and reading sections, and get admitted to the most or the least prestigious universities of my country based on their ranks. Now, different studies have shown the negative washback of this test on the instruction of high school English teachers and university preparation courses, indicating that the test leads teachers to overemphasize rote-learning of grammar and vocabulary and not foster development of speaking, listening, and writing, not to mention creativity and critical skills in students. One solution for improving the above condition is to add other language skills to the test. However, objectivity, lack of equipment, and ease of administering a paper-based multiple-choice questions exam to all students (tens of thousands in number) and ease of scoring it are among the reasons why the test format has remained unaltered. More practical and modest reforms are more plausible to be welcomed and implemented.
I believe that addition of a writing section to this test is both practical and can have many beneficial results. It is practical because students can write an essay in the same session of the rest of the test, it doesn’t need any equipment and doesn’t need many interviewers; just a relatively small group of scorers have months for scoring it based on some rubrics. Moreover, it adds a productive skill to the test, making the test have one representative of a receptive skill (i.e. reading) and one of a productive skill (i.e. writing). Academic writing is also an important skill that students need during their college. Most importantly, addition of writing to the test encourages instruction of language production, reasoning, argumentation, and creativity in students.
I aspire to effect a positive change in this test (and in my country), and if the design of my thesis is strong enough, I believe I can do it. I have access to the quantitative data of this test as well.
The problem is that I cannot find any similar work in the literature, and I haven’t been able to think of a powerful research design to make it a compelling thesis proposal. I would really and truly appreciate any suggestions for me in this regard.
I'm not sure if this is helpful but my immediate thoughts are: Do you have any evidence (or knowledge) that those students admitted to university on the basis of the existing approach are ill prepared for what's expected of them in their studies? - Is there any information available that suggests universities are obliged to address the inadequacies of students' language abilities through the provision of language support interventions?
Dear Masoud Ahrabi,
I totally agree with @Lizzie Abderrahim. To me, you need to conduct a thorough needs assessment identifying the current situation well, collecting information about the target population, analysing the existing resources, determining the needs to be addressed, and so forth. In brief, you should display the present concerns or problems through concrete evidence first rather than broadly indicating the benefits of "adding a writing section to the general English test" as you explained in para.2. To be honest, when I read your explanations or judgements, they sound so sharp as if you already completed your research and here reported your findings. I hope you keep your passion alive but in control.
Wish you good luck!
Dear Hulya and Lizzie,
Many thanks for your answers.
What I wrote in the first paragraph was based on previous literature. Different survey studies have been conducted on this test and showed how this large-scale test merely encourages rote-learning of grammar and vocabulary and has a negative washback on instruction. Also, some validation studies have criticized the test’s construct validity. It clearly does not include listening, speaking, or writing skills, and many of the previous studies have suggested inclusion of these skills for providing a better picture of students’ general language skills, but their suggestions have been declined on grounds of being impractical.
One of the things I am thinking about is to ask a group of students who have taken this admissions test and give them a standardized and well-known test like the IELTS and compare their results on both tests to see what level of correlation can be found and whether this correlation can grow if the students are given an essay as an add-on to the present admissions test. Since the admissions test is supposed to assess students’ general language skills, if addition of writing can significantly improve this correlation, then writing can be considered to be a good candidate for improving the picture of general language skills that this test provides. Additionally, it is also possible to add each skill to the admissions test and examine which single skill is the best addition to this test by providing the highest correlation with students’ IELTS scores. Maybe another thing that can be done is to see whether this admissions test is a good predictor of students’ performance in university, and if addition of writing to this test can improve its predictive ability.
These are of course some very initial thoughts, and I was kind of hoping to improve them or receive ideas that can help me come up with a stronger methodology.
I'm not disagreeing with the view that examinations of this type can impact (negatively) upon the range of skills covered by instructors / teachers and that they encourage a rote learning approach towards vocabulary and grammar and I don't doubt that students would be better served by instruction that has a wider focus, but it seems to me that if what you want is to effect a positive change in the test (and in your country) you do need to conduct some sort of study that examines whether the exam in its current form is failing to prepare students for the rigours of academic life at university. It appears that what you're proposing to do is demonstrate that another form of exam is "better" than the one currently in use and your research may well provide evidence that this is in fact the case, that one exam is better than another. However, I doubt whether this evidence on its own would be sufficient to change the established practice given that suggested changes have previously been declined on grounds of being impractical. If your research is to effect the positive change that you aspire to it does need to address to what extent students are not adequately prepared for university by the exam in its current form and what measures have to be taken by universities to address the ill-preparedness of those students. If you were to obtain evidence of this nature (that students are ill prepared and universities are obliged to offer corrective measures) you could then begin to address how the inadequacies of the exam and the resultant negative consequences might be managed through the adoption of an alternative exam format using the information obtained through the measures you've identified in your second message to propose what that alternative should be.
I think I see your point now. Thank you for the constructive comment. Based on your post, I actually came up with the idea that I probably need to first gather some information through a survey study from university professors regarding their ideas about the admissions exam and how well it selects and groups students together for universities. Then, if dissatisfaction is expressed, I have enough reason to continue with the second phase of the study.
Just for your information, students who want to study English as a foreign language in my country spend the first 2 3 semesters studying general English to get ready to, for example, study English literature or translation. What the admission test intends to do is to assess students’ general language ability and send the most proficient to the best universities. Universities do not get a say in choosing the students that enter them. A problem that is often observed in this method is that students, having been ranked and sent to universities based on their reading, grammar, and vocabulary, are not in fact homogeneous in terms of their proficiency and it makes teaching them a harder job, since some students are always too good and some are too weak for the class contents. Having an entrance exam that provides a better measure for assessing students’ proficiency results in having more homogeneous classes at university level.
Good luck with your research - I hope you are able to bring about the changes you want.
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