Canadian Association of Language Assessment / Association canadienne pour l'évaluation des langues

                                  Alexandre Mesquita, PhD candidate in Education, Université de Sherbrooke
     
                                  Project Title: The evolution of 4th year pre-service ESL teachers’ beliefs

                                                           and practices related to formative assessment.

 

 

This study examines fourth year pre-service English as a second language (ESL) teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices related to formative assessment and its impact on their process of learning. Exploring and understanding how pre-service ESL teachers’ beliefs and teaching practice evolve will provide insights on how pre-service teachers construct their knowledge about formative assessment so that teacher preparation can be improved and pre-service teachers graduate in possession of necessary knowledge to perform such tasks. The theoretical underpinnings for this research are studies about a) pre-service teachers’ prior beliefs, b) pre-service teachers’ field experiences (practicum) and c) assessment literacy (teaching methods and formal evaluation courses). The data will be collected through open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, stimulated recall and narratives. Our initial hypothesis is that pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practices will mainly evolve based on their practicum experiences and associate teachers’ support. 

For more information, contact alexsherbrooke@yahoo.ca

                                        Valerie Kolesova, MA Program in Bilingualism Studies, University of Ottawa​

                                        Project Title: Teaching and Assessing ESL Sociopragmatics

                                                                 in the English Intensive Program at the University of Ottawa

This research aims to provide some validity evidence to support the use of the ESL sociopragmatics test developed by Roever, Elder and Fraser (2014). The authors recommend that further validation of the tool is needed in various contexts, which is addressed in this research. In this specific case, I will be investigating to what extent the test items will be useful for designing an instructional unit on ESL sociopragmatics based on test scores of high proficiency ESL learners in English Intensive Program at a Canadian university, as well as see to what extent they will find explicit L2 pragmatics instruction beneficial for their language learning experience.

For more information:  vkole006@uottawa.ca