The ECAES exam is a test designed for students in their last year at the university. As a pre-service English teacher, I feel curious about the ECAES English exam due to the fact, that I have to take it next year and I don’t get so much information of what it is about.
This is a mandatory test and it has four main purposes:
Ø To assess the level of competency of students after completing a higher education program.
Ø To provide of information for building indicators of the quality of higher education programs and institutions which inform institutional qualification processes, policy design, and decision making, at every level of the system.
Ø To compare and analyze the performance of higher education institutions and identify trends from the characteristics of these institutions which account for differences in quality between levels, types of institution, teaching methods, etc.
Ø To produce indicators of the value added by higher education in terms of acquired competencies. (icfes.gov.co)
The document:” VALIDATION STUDY OF COLOMBIA’S ECAES ENGLISH EXAM.” is a research study conducted at Universidad de los Andes. The participants were 15 university English language teachers.Data was collected using two tools: Content Evaluation Sessions and Think-aloud protocol.
In the document, the researchers present the findings after examining the validity of the mentioned test.
First, the authors explained the following: Students take a battery of three exams, one of which is related to their field of study to prove proficiency in the subject area. The other two exams are the same for all students: a Spanish reading exam and the English exam. (López and Janssen, 2010).
They explained the concepts of validity that we studied in our assessment class and based on those concepts, they analyzed the parts of the test,the validity of it and the usefulness of it.
The ECAES English Exam can be considered a low-stakes test since it is only used to inform the public about the effectiveness of the new language education policy, and no important decisions are taken based on test scores. (López and Janssen, 2010).
The exam only assesses the following skills: reading, vocabulary and grammar. Listening, speaking and writing are not assessed because of practicality reasons (difficulty in setting up adequate technology to assess listening and difficulty in training raters for speaking and writing).
In the findings the authors mentioned relevant aspects such as:
NEGATIVE
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-Assessing grammar and vocabulary skills are more authentic than other parts of the test.
- These parts are discourse-based tasks and do not assess syntactical and lexical knowledge and skills in isolation.
- The test has no major negative effects on students, teachers, or programs.
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- Teachers feel that the ECAES English Exam is not adequately aligned to the CEFR level descriptors.
- The content of the test is not fully aligned to the content of their foreign language programs.
- Some parts of the ECAES English Exam are too difficult or too easy for some test-takers.
- Lack of authentic language use in the tasks.
- A lot of guessing, due to the selected response test format.
- the construct of the test fails to include relevant aspects of general English language ability (e.g. listening, speaking, and writing) and many test items
do not require students to use a wide range of areas of English language knowledge
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I found the document useful for our assessment class and for the project that I'm doing. It shows facts based on evidence and the concepts are really well defined, so I found room for clarification of some aspects of validation.
the Ecaes or pruebas saber pro is something we are worried about, I think we keep with the same problem that when we heard the word testing, we relate it with failing at once. but I truly believe that it is not something that will happen to us, just because we are really well prepared.
ResponderEliminarHi, Danitza, I find this entry very interesting because, as you mentioned at the beginning, I had no clear idea about what the ECAES evaluates either (now I have some).I guess that the majority may say that this test is reliable because it evaluates each student under the same conditions, but what I have always thought of those kinds of standardized tests is not very positive. I guess, first of all, that it should include all the skills, because depending on the student, there is a special one that everybody feels is better at, and sometimes these exams make you feel stressed, nervous, and anxious, as folguer said. I never have a positive attitude towards them because I feel they don't evaluate what I really know. But, well, this is the way we are assessed, so, we have to give our best and try to get the best results.
ResponderEliminarThanks for your comments Folguer and Aura. You both talked about the feelings we have when we think of being assessed and you're right the majority of the time we feel anxiety.
ResponderEliminarReading the "validation study of the ECAES english exam"we can know deeper what it is about, the analysis the researchers did and the findings they present based on the validity principle.
Hi Danitza
ResponderEliminarWell, I somehow disagree with the low-stake rank that it is given to this exam, although it is true that there are no direct consequences; getting a high score on this exam can and has given several opportunities to those who achieve high scores.
Hi Danitza,
ResponderEliminarI like the fact this is the only entry I've read about the ECAES test. According to what you mentioned: 'it is only used to inform the public about the effectiveness of the new language education policy', I'll discuss the word 'effectiveness' because, as we know, the productive skills (writing, speaking) and one which is receptve (listening) aren't taken into account. To be a serious exam, it must include everything that we need to understand, learn, acquire a new language.
Thanks for helping us summarizing the postive and negative aspects with your chart!