Score: 10%

Submission deadline: 25th October, 2012.

You are to hand this Practical 1 in Groups of 3.

Download the template for Practical 1 here. Make sure you respond to the questions formulated in section a) and the assignment included in section b) for each task (1 and 2) in the same document.

Scoring criteria for Practical 1|Practical 1 Scoring criteria. Please, consult them.

Score: 10%

Submission deadline: 29th November, 2012.

You are to hand this Practical 2 individually.

Please, read the material below about writing summaries for advanced level learners of English. Then, bearing in mind the nature and characteristics of this type of academic text, create a scoring rubric for assessing summaries.

Material: Writing Summaries.

Your rubric should have into account that you are assessing English language learners, which means that, when assessing writing, you also need to take into account the use of the language made by the students (i.e. correct grammar, appropriate vocabulary, etc.). Thus, you need to assess both the use of the language and the skills involved in writing summaries. You should end up with a rubric of about 4 to 5 categories. As for the levels of achievement, I suggest that you use four levels (very low to low (1), acceptable (2), fairly good (3), and excellent (4). Then, of course, you need to define each level of achievement, as in the examples provided.

Example of Scoring Rubric 1.
Example of Scoring Rubric 2.

Use the following Summary Writing Scoring Rubric Template for the design of your scoring rubric.

There is no word limit for this task.

Score: 20%

Submission deadline: 20th December, 2012.

You are to do this Practical 3 in Groups of 4.

Test design. In this assignment, you are going to design a test of EFL for high-school leavers in Murcia in the vein of the test they do to gain access to university (i.e., Selectividad). Please, have a look at this one as an example: June 2011 Option A. Then,

1. Choose (and most likely adapt) an appropriate text. Remember, the proficiency level that these students are supposed to demonstrate in this test is B1, so your text should be at approximately this level, mainly in terms of grammatical complexity and lexical difficulty. The text needs to be 250 words long. Make sure you respect the word limit and do not exceed 265 words!!! Finally, make sure the topic of the text is accessible for these students (similar to the topics included in Bachillerato EFL coursebooks).

2. Analyze the sample test included above and decide what exactly is assessed in each of the tasks included in the test. If you are unsure, visit the website for PAU Bachillerato Inglés and read the document about the assessment criteria that raters need to read before they proceed to the correction of the exams in actual Selectividad.

3. Design your 6 tasks and include each of them in the Test Design Template.

4. Using the Test Solutions Template, please, provide the correct/acceptable answers for all 6 tasks in your test. In the case of tasks 2.1 and 2.2, please, indicate which is the correct answer (a, b, c, or d) and why the other three distractors are incorrect. For tasks 5 and 6, please, provide sample answers within the word limits that the tasks require the test-takers to respect.

5. OPTIONAL: If you wish to explain anything about the text you chose or the actual tasks you designed, please, include your comments on a separate document (Test Commentary Template).