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ClarissaMach
Joined: 18 May 2006
Posts: 644
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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 Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 10:06 am Post subject: English native speakers and English proficiency exams |
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Dear friends,
Driven by curiosity, I decided to do an online proficiency test in my native language, Portuguese (all I had to do was to search for the words "Portuguese" and "proficiency" at google).
I did the test and although I was able to answer all the grammar questions without commiting any mistake, I couldn't help noticing that there were some dubious questions in which more than one of the given answers would fit.
What is more unbelievable is that I failed in two questions of Portuguese reading comprehension . . .wow! I always thought my Portuguese was impeccable! Should I be ashamed? Or that whole test was too ambiguous?
To make things worse, I noticed two grammar mistakes in the text we were supposed to read and comprehend. I even send an e-mail to the owners of the website asking them to correct it. They already gave me a reply, believing I was someone trying to learn Portuguese. . . .
Well, all this blah-blah-blah was to ask a simple question: what do English native speakers have to say about the English proficiency exams? Do you find it hard to do? Ambiguous and so on? Please tell me!
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Jintii
Joined: 18 Feb 2006
Posts: 111
Location: New York City
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| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 11:48 am Post subject: |
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  Good question.
I'm a native speaker of English. Years and years ago, I was a high school exchange student in Japan. I was placed in an English class because... well, everybody had to take English. And I didn't do very well on any of my tests. They were mostly fill-in-the-blank without any context, and the blanks could often be filled in half a dozen ways, but only one would be considered correct. So the more English you knew, the worse your performance on the test. My classmates found it hilarious. They could barely speak English at all, but they got more answers right on those tests than I ever did.
As far as standardized tests, well, I've never taken any that are meant for non-native speakers of English. But my impression from a number of websites is that there is a lot of concern on those tests about very picky grammar points, and not much importance placed on actual ability to communicate. So you end up with incredible knowledge of grammatical jargon that won't matter after the test, but an inability to express yourself, which WILL matter.
But as I said, I've never taken one of those tests. Maybe I'm wrong.... |
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Mister Micawber
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 774
Location: Yokohama
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| Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 2:14 am Post subject: |
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| what do English native speakers have to say about the English proficiency exams? Do you find it hard to do? Ambiguous and so on? |
Other than for Jintii's comment on the pickiness of the grammar questions, I would say that the official English language proficiency tests (ETS, Cambridge, IELTS) that are carefully prepared are fine-- they are essentially free of errors, vagaries and inconsistencies. I have no trouble with them personally, because I teach test preparation and am familiar with the sorts of grammatical, lexical and structural items being tested.
On the other hand, English proficiency tests prepared and offered locally (as by national education boards in non-English-speaking countries) often carry errors in usage, offer multiple 'correct' answers, etc.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to test 'ability to communicate' with a written examination (and it is difficult to do so fairly even with an oral exam). The best this sort of test can do is indicate whether the testee probably has the grounding for communicative ability.
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Canadian-American who teaches English for a living at Mr Micawber's |
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ClarissaMach
Joined: 18 May 2006
Posts: 644
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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| Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 6:16 am Post subject: |
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| Mister Micawber wrote: |
Other than for Jintii's comment on the pickiness of the grammar questions, I would say that the official English language proficiency tests (ETS, Cambridge, IELTS) that are carefully prepared are fine-- they are essentially free of errors, vagaries and inconsistencies. I have no trouble with them personally, because I teach test preparation and am familiar with the sorts of grammatical, lexical and structural items being tested.
On the other hand, English proficiency tests prepared and offered locally (as by national education boards in non-English-speaking countries) often carry errors in usage, offer multiple 'correct' answers, etc.
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I'm glad to read that, Mr Micawber. In fact, the test I did had been produced by a company I had never heard of before--this might explain the problems I had.
What amazed me the most is that in the reading comprehension test they picked up the text of a very complex Brazilian author, Clarice Lispector. She's a kind of "Virginia Woolf of the tropics". . . .
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