The assessment of Bosnian EFL learners’ knowledge by two different measures: test and writing assignment

Abstract

English is taught as a foreign language in elementary and high schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH). However, since the number of English classes per week is very limited they should be utilized in the best possible way to produce proficient users of English. Nowadays, when language proficiency is viewed as one's ability to speak and write in the target language and not about it, the need for the proficiency evaluation in schools arises. The present study attempts to shed a spot of light on this issue, investigating two very common ways of assessing students' knowledge in schools, namely tests and writing assignments. Hence, through the interviews with English teachers and the analysis of students' tests and writing assignments, the current paper explores the ways in which these two measures are realized, the tasks they consist of, the type of linguistic knowledge they are used to evaluate, their levels of difficulty, and the type of corrective feedback teachers provide on both of them. The results suggest that teachers on both measure rather students' explicit than their implicit knowledge, focusing much more on accuracy than fluency development.

The English of Bosnia and Herzegovina

“…Despite the fact that the British variety was expected to be prevalent in the aspect of grammar, since it is usually explicitly taught through formal education (Habibić & Dubravac, ; Tankosić & Dubravac, ), these expectations were not met and the American variety surfaced as a more dominant variety. This means that the third hypothesis suggesting British English prevalence in the domain of grammar was refuted.…”

Opportunities and Challenges Facing Bosnian High-School EFL Learners

“…Extensive research on foreign language teaching, and English language teaching and learning in particular, has been conducted in different EFL contexts, including various aspects such as foreign language learning motivation, types of teaching and learning methods, factors influencing foreign language acquisition as well as many others (Brown, 1994;Crystal, 1997Crystal, , 2003Lambert, Gardner, 1972;Krashen, 1987;Ortega, 2009;Rost, 2006). The importance of learning English as a foreign language is also reflected in the fact that this is a mandatory subject in as many as 14 European countries or regions within countries, including primary and secondary schools (Baidak, et al, 2012) and the improvement of the quality and effectiveness of language learning has become one of the key goals of the European Educational and Training Framework for Education andTraining ''ET 2020'' (Baidak et al, 2012).…”

“…As for the process of learning, English language learning in particular, many research studies primarily focused on the use of different types of learning strategies (Bećirović et al, 2017;Bećirović et al, 2018;Brdarević-Čeljo, Asotić, 2017), whereas some studies investigated different factors impacting students' proficiency in primary and high schools in Sarajevo and other cities in B&H (Bećirović, Podojak, 2018;Delić et al,, 2018;Habibić, Dubravac, 2016, Rizvić, Bećirović, 2017Tankosic, Dubravac, 2016). For instance, Tankosić and Dubravac (2016) investigated the assessment of Bosnian EFL learners' knowledge by means of two different measures, a test and a writing assignment.…”

The Plasticity of Students’ Language Learning Beliefs: The Interplay of Gender, Grade and Educational Level

“…Therefore, this study aims to provide a more detailed analysis by taking into consideration three different variables that may be determinative in the construction of LLBs; namely, gender, educational level, and grades of students in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Despite different studies related to the process of EFL learning having been conducted in this sociocultural context, such as the studies measuring the impact of diverse factors on students' English language proficiency as well as the proficiency itself (Brdarević-Čeljo et al, 2018;Delić et al, 2018;Habibić & Dubravac, 2016;Kovačević et al, 2018;Rizvić & Bećirović, 2017) and their use of learning/reading strategies Brdarević-Čeljo & Asotić, 2017;Tankosić & Dubravac, 2016), studies exploring learners' LLBs are quite rare. Thus, one of the studies explored the state of LLBs among high-school students (Ozturk & Turkyilmaz, 2014), another one investigating the correlation between the beliefs and language learning strategies (Akbarov & Kovačević, 2015), and finally, the relationship between LLBs and the complexity of syntactic structures used by language learners (Kovačević, 2017).…”